Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Proverbs 8:1-4
A casual reading of the opening lines of Proverbs 8 can seem to imply that what is known as “The Poem to Lady Wisdom” suggests the honoring of two deities: God the Lord and a female consort. But before jumping to that conclusion, ponder the fact that the Hebrew language has no neuter. Every noun must be designated as either “he” or “she”; there is no “it” available.
Further, poetic texts are not intended to be the basis of literalistic rationalism. Instead they are meant to stretch our imagination and send us off prepared for new insights, for deeper understanding. Wisdom is indeed a crucial attribute of the one God. But Lady Wisdom is neither a goddess nor a consort; let alone is she a temptress. But she graciously offers her priceless gifts to all who will listen in the public square, at the crossroads, at the gates and entrance portals of the town.
Who among us does not need and seek a greater depth of knowledge in order that we may more fully serve God? Perhaps we despair at achieving this. Despair may be justified if we try to manufacture wisdom ourselves. Today’s reading reveals that what we seek has been characteristic of God since before creation and is available to us because it is in accord with the interior desire of the One whom we serve.
In the history of Christian thought and piety, divine wisdom as found in the book of Proverbs becomes the foundation upon which have been built our understanding of the Word of God (logos) and indeed of the Trinity itself. This we shall explore more fully as we pray our way through the week ahead.
Gracious God, to all who truly seek you, grant the holy wisdom that has forever been at the center of your redemptive love for your world. Amen.

Call it the “full” gospel: repentance and forgiveness, and not one without the other. Only, what gets proclaimed is very often one or the other, even one without the other, and the result not really “gospel” at all.

I grew up in a church where “repentance” was the sermon. We more or less masochistically gathered for excoriation and reminder: how sorry our state, how sinful our selves. Sunday by Sunday we were sinners in the hands of an angry preacher. The veins throbbing on his red neck were the merest hints of God’s ire and hell’s flame. Every stray thought, as well as every wandering step; every polluted idea or, God forbid! “impure act”: smoking, pool, dancing, cards, alcohol, a Bible other than the King James—all of it was condemned without mercy or plea. We left knowing we were people of unclean lips, dwelling in a land of people with unclean lips. And many times the altar was filled with mourners, lamenting and bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness.

Without real forgiveness, our contrition never ended. There was no joy in our “salvation.”

In other churches, as I understand it, “forgiveness” was the sermon, only it was not really forgiveness either, because forgiveness implies that something is amiss and needs forgiving, and God loves everyone just as they are. We may have missed the mark, but “sin” is such a medieval word. We all have room for growth, of course, but regret is immobilizing. What we need is positive reinforcement, a pep talk, coaching,  skills development, but not the spiritual disciplines or repentance.

Without repentance, though—a genuine lament for who and what we are not—contrition never begins. And “morning joy” comes only after a “night of weeping.”

But where there is repentance and forgiveness, not one without the other, there is the gospel Jesus commissioned us to preach, promising the joy of full salvation.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book titled A HOUSE OF PRAYER: THE POWER OF PRAYING IN COMMUNITY. He welcomes your comments.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Acts 2:1-13

“Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful. . . .”

For over a decade, I have met weekly with several other women in a discipleship group. Each Thursday we begin by praying the “Prayer to the Holy Spirit”* that I quote from above. After all these years, bidding the Spirit to come into my heart feels quite natural. But apparently praying in this way is not common.

Several years ago when leading a workshop on discovering spiritual gifts, I opened with a prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit—appropriate, I thought, given our subject. When the workshop ended, one of the participants made a point of coming to say to me, “I have never heard anyone pray to the Holy Spirit before.”

If we looked back over our recent worship experiences, the Holy Spirit is likely to be the person of the Trinity least addressed. Other than at Pentecost, we seldom talk about the Spirit or address the Spirit except in hymns.

Discussing the Holy Spirit makes many of us feel uncomfortable. It raises questions to which we have no answers and opens doors we’d as soon leave shut. Today’s reading includes the account of people speaking in tongues. Discussion of this passage usually ends up devoting significant time to that phenomenon, diverting attention from the role of the Spirit’s less spectacular but far more pervasive role in our daily life.

Going back to the prayer familiar to me: What would happen if we prayed from the heart each day, “Come, Holy Spirit”? This week as we approach Pentecost, we’ll be considering what it means to invite the Holy Spirit into our lives.

Holy Spirit, help me to open my heart and my life to you. Amen.

*Adapted from The Walk to Emmaus, used by permission of Upper Room Books.

I am thinking about other transitions too. Soon I will be moving to another church, and this past week I was hosting my replacement as he met the leadership of our church. It felt like I was introducing my girlfriend to her new boyfriend, to her new and better boyfriend, in fact! He will be a much better fit: has local roots, a folksy demeanor that matches the ethos, ears that allow him to banter (while I am deaf as a post). It is a match made in heaven.

As they chatted happily, I mused, cataloged all that has happened over the last few weeks and months that brought us to this transition, and not least some hurtful, unfair, and finally humiliating discussions that prompted me to put my name on the move list. I chose to leave, but I had hoped to stay. And so a part of me is angry, though below that I am just embarrassed and sad (and resentful: the legalistic part of me does not want to see even subtle subversion rewarded!). But if not for all of that I would not on Thursday have received the news that reduced me to tears and made me all but unable to talk to my new District Superintendent. I am so humbled, so honored, so blessed to be going where I’m being sent. All is well. Everybody profits.

Now there will be unhappy preachers in our conference, and unhappy churches too (been there, done that). And there is no guarantee on this side of Jordan that everybody profits now or lastingly. But each time we see a resolution on account of which everyone is happier and more fulfilled—and all of it an unexpected joy on the downside of difficulty—we can be sure that God is at work, and miraculously so. When EVERYONE profits, that is sure evidence, I believe, of the mystery and majesty and wonder of God’s economy.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Jesus is saying, I believe, what Paul and I are echoing. That is, in this world there are clear winners and clear losers, judged by the categories of this economy’s spreadsheets. But in God’s economy there is a kind of divine giving that allows everyone to profit, to win, to be at peace. It may offend us, of course, that God works this way (remember the workers in the vineyard?), but ultimately we all come to realize that all is grace.

All is grace: that is really hard news, and really good news, and demands deep humility. One dimension of that humility is accepting grace for ourselves, and that is difficult because we have been taught to think “salvation” is a “reward” of our own hard work (and as a consequence we will not accept charity from anyone, even God, or “bless” anyone who does). More difficult still is accepting God’s grace for someone else, and especially one who has hurt us, others who are “ahead” of us or—though we hardly pause to parse this non sequitur—those we view as “less deserving” of God’s grace than ourselves.

But Frederick Buechner writes that until it is good for all of us, it is not good for any of us. In other words, when everybody wins, there is God’s joy and the very peace of Christ. Weeping and loss may be the sign that all is not yet as it will be, but we believe the Day is coming; indeed, that It is already on Its way.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book titled A HOUSE OF PRAYER: THE POWER OF PRAYING IN COMMUNITY. He welcomes your comments.

Nicola Vidamour

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Acts 16:16-34

The Methodist Church in Britain has recently produced a new hymnal called Singing the Faith. Charles Wesley, one of the two brothers who started the Methodist movement, was a prolific hymn writer; and Methodists have been well-known from their earliest days for the way in which they sing the faith.

Paul and Silas also sang their faith—even in the middle of the night while locked in prison after receiving a severe flogging. Despite their pain and suffering they still burst into song, offering praise and prayer to God.

It is believed that John Newton, the former slave trader, set the words of his famous hymn “Amazing Grace” to a tune he heard the slaves singing in the galley of a ship. African spirituals give powerful witness to the way in which black Christians have sung their faith in the midst of oppression and injustice.

Paul and Silas are imprisoned because they released a young slave girl from the spirit that possessed her, thus depriving her owners of the money she provided for them. This girl described her emancipators as “slaves of the Most High God.” Paul and Silas are indeed bound and held captive by God as well as by their prison chains; but their singing makes it overwhelmingly clear that their faith gives them a deep sense of freedom.

We sometimes talk about singing that “raises the roof” because of its volume and enthusiasm. When Paul and Silas sing “there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.” Paul and Silas—and all those who heard them singing their faith—are literally set free. Singing the faith is liberating!
God of freedom, help us to sing our faith until the walls of oppression come tumbling down. Amen.  

I was reminded of that quote recently as I prepared a committal service for a person who had spent her whole life, it seemed, pushing people away, most especially the ones to whom she might have been closest: siblings, children, other family, friends. Her service was scheduled for a rainy Sunday afternoon, and I was convinced the funeral home crew and I would be the only ones there to pray this poor woman into the ground. But the weather was so bad, the decision was made to move the service inside to the chapel, and so a few of her family, for duty’s sake if not for love’s, circled around as I read a few scriptures and sang a song.

Everyone deserves scripture and a song. Or if “deserve” is not the right word, then this: the Church proclaims grace in spite of everything, the mercy of God even when God’s children are unmerciful, whether to themselves or to others.

What hurt lay beneath her bitterness and anger? What guilt or regret? There had to be something there, or something not there. The question for me was not whether she would go to heaven, for God is great and God is good, but whether she would be happy in heaven, what with all those people already there she had spent so much energy driving away, and more of them coming soon enough.

We were gathered at the coffin, in the chapel as the rain poured down. I might have stopped after Psalm 25 and Psalm 130. But I read John 14, too, and sang Psalm 23, the Scottish setting, to the tune of “Amazing Grace” (I heard that arrangement once on Prairie Home Companion and have used at every funeral I have done since, almost without exception). I might have stopped there, but the people looked at me as if waiting, maybe even wanting to hear a word, some word to fill in this broken moment, which was but the last of so many broken moments. Was there any word that might connect the many silences they had experienced, something other than the distancing word?

I said only this: we all experience separation and distance on account of what has been said or hasn’t been, what has been done or not done; on account of kindnesses withheld or kindnesses refused. The world, life, sin, all drive wedges between us, and even into our own inner life. And so we are not only separated from each other but also experience distance between what we want to be and what we actually are, between what we profess and how we life. Many of the forces at work in this world are centrifugal, driving us to the edges, away from each other and away from our fondest hopes.

But God’s love is ever and always centripetal, works to bring us back to the center, to God. The gospel is a message of reconciliation. We believe that Jesus lived and died, and the Holy Spirit is given, to bring about that reconciliation. We believe that One Day Christ will be all in all, and that that Day has begun to dawn already, even if many of the forces at loose in the world and in our own hearts try to keep us parted.

I said, “I believe; and if I could not believe this and preach this, I could not go on.  I do believe and preach that the ‘One who began that good work in us, and in the world, will be faithful to complete it.’ That you and she and I and all of us will be at peace and unparted on the great Day of Christ Jesus.”

It is worth believing and hoping and preaching such a thing, at funerals and otherwise: that when we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. We will, at Last, have a taste for heaven and be at peace—with God, and each other, and ourselves.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

Doreen McFarlane served the church as a pastor, scholar, teacher, and author, for fifteen years. After an extensive career as a classical singer, performing throughout the world and in almost every state of the USA, she entered seminary. Her Master of Divinity is from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1991, and her Ph.D. from Chicago Theological Seminary, 1998. While serving as pastor of churches in Illinois, south Florida, and Connecticut, she has also continually taught biblical studies at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She served for four years as visiting professor in China (2006-2010) teaching Hebrew, Greek, and Old Testament at the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary (2006-2009), and then one year teaching American Religion and Culture and English at Shanghai University (2009-2010). She and her spouse, Michael have three daughters and four granddaughters. Her published books include the following: The People Are Holy: the History and Theology of Free Church Worship, cowritten with New Testament scholar, Graydon F. Snyder of Chicago, Mercer Press, November 2005; Weddings with Today’s Families in Mind: a Handbook for Pastors, The Pilgrim Press, June 2006; Funerals with Today’s Families in Mind: a Handbook for Pastors, The Pilgrim Press, March 2008; Jesus for the Courageous, Self-published E book with Kindle, August 2011.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Psalm 67

Psalms are the texts for music sung in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, music that has been lost in antiquity. Still, the words echo into our very souls to this day. We continue to be amazed at how often psalms address our modern issues. Psalm 67 sets a good example with its back-and-forth motion. This psalm leads us out from our inward focus, into the world, and then back. We can sing or pray this psalm. We might recite it alone or in worship. Psalm 67 is a “home and away” psalm. It begins with a “text within a text,” the familiar words of Numbers 6:24-26 that declare God’s blessing on Israel.

Then the psalm shifts away from Israel to other nations. Israel is chosen, but to be chosen always entails a task. God has made a home in Israel and blessed it so that, in turn, Israel may show to the world the wonders of what God can do. The psalm envisions all nations as happy and being judged fairly by God who cares for all creation. The concluding verses joyfully direct us back home, as the people thank God for a good harvest. They ask God to continue to bless them so they may bring the whole world to know this wonderful God.

In our times, we easily think of everything that is going wrong and forget the bounty of our lives. In our time, many people wonder about their purpose in life. It is good to realize that when we live out our faith to the best of our ability, we are fulfilling our purpose.

Great God, all creation is yours and everything in it. May all of the world find not only peace but also joy in living. May I do my part in living in your ways. Amen.

In Migdala, the home of Mary Magdalene, we saw “the Jesus Boat.” Discovered in 1986 during the first phase of a continuing drought (water levels are dozens of feet below normal), this boat has been carbon-dated to the first century. It is most likely not a boat Jesus sat in (it could be, but the odds are astronomical); still, it is a boat like those used by fishermen on the Sea of Galilee in the first century.

Thing is, the boat is pretty small: only thirty feet long, about eight feet wide, but the evangelist says Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two unnamed others—that is seven people—are in the boat, and some nets too, and fish presumably, if they caught any. They needed  room to work and for the clothes they took off so they could work, and there may have been a mast—a lot of people and a lot of stuff for one pretty small boat.

Pretty crowded in that boat, and I am thinking today about the unnamed others, those other two. I have looked at this text from so many angles over the years, but I do not think I ever have paid much attention to the passenger manifest, and each one’s resumé:

• Peter: Bragging Peter, Denying Peter, Denying-with-a-curse-that-he-even-knew-the-man Peter.
• Thomas: the same Thomas who forsook the community,  refused to believe the others unless he had proof. “Doubting Thomas” is what we call him.
• Nathanael from Cana in Galilee: remember him—at all? The only other time we see Nathanael is back in chapter 1, when Philip, one of Jesus’ first disciples, ran to get Nathanael and said, “We have found the Messiah! Jesus of Nazareth!” And Nathanael said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He is a racist, in other words, and a skeptic too.
• The sons of Zebedee: oh, brother, these brothers! They want positions of honor, so they ask Jesus for a seat at the right and at the left (or maybe they have their mother ask on their behalf, and which is the more embarrassing?), and though they could not themselves cast out a demon, they tried to stop a man who was casting out demons in Jesus name, because “he was not with us…”

None of these in the boat appear to be exemplars in any way: can’t fish, don’t believe, doubt and deny Jesus, one before he even met him. And who are these other two, the unnamed ones? I don’t know, but I wonder if this makes a place for me, because, like Peter, I have denied Jesus—have lived and spoken as if I don’t even know the man. Like Thomas, I have separated myself from the church, been just as demanding, just as selfish and untrusting—as if Jesus had never breathed his Holy Spirit on me. Like Nathanael, I have been quick to judge people before I even meet them, not least because of where they live. Like James and John, I have been just as concerned about my place, about the honor due me, never mind my failures or record of service.

Pretty crowded in the boat that evening, but I think that there is room in the boat for me. And maybe for another too. That is the bad news: there is room in the boat for us.

But here is the Good News: in Revelation 5, another John tells us he sees that every creature on heaven and in earth and under the earth and in the sea all sang praise “to him who sits on the throne and to to Lamb… (to them) be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever.”

Heaven’s choir, in other words. And there’s room for us there too. Yes, we are in the same boat with the others but also in the very same choir.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

Derrek Belase is currently pastor of Highland Park UMC in Stillwater, OK.  He also teaches sociology and world religions at Northern Oklahoma College, a gateway school to Oklahoma State University.  In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Rev. Rebekah Belase, and their four year old daughter, Madison.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Psalm 148:7-14
People in the United States will celebrate Earth Day today. Since 1970, it has been observed to inspire appreciation for and awareness of our natural environment. In today’s reading from the Psalter, humans (verses 11-12) as well as nonhumans (verses 7-10) are called upon to praise God.
But how exactly do sea monsters or mountains or fruit trees praise God? Just like humans, they praise their Maker by living out God’s intent for them in their creation. Trees do not praise God simply by offering humans shade in the summer. Trees praise God by producing beautiful leaves in the summer, which then turn red, yellow, and even brown as fall turns to winter before producing new leaves again in the spring. Trees remind us that the God we praise is a God who creates and recreates, time and time again.
A few years ago, I was riding on a public boat/taxi that took me and a group of seminarians to a remote village in the jungles of the Amazon rainforest. The rainstorm that cooled us during the evening boat ride and the pink dolphins that greeted us by jumping in and out of the water the next morning were praising God by doing what they had been created to do.
We praise God not by using others, whether humans or nonhumans, to our own advantage but by allowing them to exist for their created, intended, and unique purpose. Do we treat trees, mountains, and sea creatures as objects to use or as subjects that remind us of the creative artistry of God? You can celebrate Earth Day wherever you are this day by simply appreciating the many ways all of God’s creatures praise God.
Creator God, along with all your other created beings, we praise you this day. Amen.

Yeah. And for some, I guess, that war is not over even yet and may never be. Like Nathanael from Cana in Galilee (John 1:45-46), we still judge, even hate, people simply on account of where they come from. Sometimes the cause is noble, sometimes not. Sometimes the lines are clearly drawn, sometimes not so much. Force of arms can stop the violence, sometimes, I guess, in the short term; but more often war begets war, suffering begets suffering, fanaticism fans a different color of fanaticism, and the carnage continues.  At least that is how it appears to this preacher.

Monday, though, I had the urge. My niece, who refers to herself as “Quikchik,” because she is—she set an 8:28 pace at the Boston Marathon, and my friend Craig Langston tells me that is fast for a forty-six-year-old woman—escaped the carnage by about thirty minutes. With the rest of the world I was horrified, almost in shock … but then again, not really. I mean, who was surprised? Really? What better target for a terrorist than Boston, on Patriot Day, at a time when the old, the slow, and the halt—and those running for causes, whose dream is just to run, not to win, to do 26.2 for themselves and their families and others they love one way or the other—when they are coming to the finish?

And all of it on TV. Here is the scary thing to me: Who knows the collateral damage in our own hearts, minds, and souls when we see these kinds of things—shootings, bombings—with a frequency that almost numbs our horror? Now some disgruntled worker or former spouse or teen or child, even, who maybe never would have thought of a gun as a “peacemaker,” decides that is the very way to make peace: a belch of violence to soothe their particular nausea.

Anyway, I had this urge. Not to join the army or national guard or police force. Not to buy a gun or take a course in defusing bombs. But to become a runner. A marathoner. Consider it an act of Peaceful Defiance.

My two artificial knees and fifty-eight-year-old-frame will not, I suspect, allow it (though I may talk to Craig, who knows about such things), but I want to. I want to run,  to join with other runners, and run again; in London this weekend, Boston next year, and who knows where all else, just as a way to say, “Do your worst. Fire all the guns you have. Set your little trashcan bombs. You cannot—you cannot and will NOT—win this race.”

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Psalm 23
When I was a child, Psalm 23 became a security blanket for me. I whispered the words in bed when I heard strange noises in the night. I repeated them as I walked home from school, taking a shortcut through the woods. I clung to them at age thirteen when the Navy chaplain came to our home to bring word that my father’s plane had disappeared into the ocean.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (kjv).
As a pastor, my first funeral was for a nine-year-old boy who died of leukemia. Instinctively I turned to Psalm 23 as the text for the homily. I’ve included it in every funeral since, often inviting the congregation to join in praying the words with me.
But Psalm 23 is not just about comfort in dark times. It is not just about the shadow of death. Ultimately it’s about life and living—which is why I always require youth in the confirmation program to memorize it. Psalm 23 involves living life in the constant awareness of God’s leading, presence, and provision. It invites our trusting God in green pastures and through dark valleys. Finally, we let God’s promises of goodness and mercy dwell in us until we become confident that nothing can separate us from those promises and from God.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (kjv). When and how has Psalm 23 been a security blanket for you? How has it reminded you of God’s leading, presence, and provision? How has God’s goodness and mercy “chased” after you (The Message), bringing you safely home to God?
Shepherd us, O God, in green pastures and dark valleys, every day of our lives, always leading us home to you. Amen.   

Perhaps the first point of comparison between us and the text is that many of us are locked away in our own fears, whatever they might be. We ourselves also have heard the joyful news that Jesus is raised from the dead, that the powers that be are no powers at all, that we have no need to fear anything or anyone, but we do not always hear that testimony, or receive that word, or live as if the evangel makes any real difference. I guess that means we are not so different from Thomas.

And isn’t it interesting, that, though he is called Didymus, “the twin,” the fourth evangelist never tells us to whom Thomas is twin? That is because he is twin to each and every one of us. He is our twin, that is to say, mine and yours, because we can too often see in ourselves the same lack of trust Thomas evidences: he doubts not only the report but the reporters! His friends, the ones he has been with for years: he does not trust the testimony of those who say they have seen the Lord, just as we sometimes do not trust what others say to us about their religious experiences. We may trust these people otherwise, but should they tell of a religious experience, some powerful moment of insight or grace, we are unmoved.

Or maybe it is the other way round for you: you have wanted to share, to testify, to spread the word of some great grace God has given; but even your friends do not receive that word. Perhaps you shut down and quit sharing. Sad. Like Moses covering his face before the Israelites because he glowed and it scared people.

The preacher in me wants to say this: Thomas demands proof, but he does not show up in the place where proof might be found. Everybody else got the word, where they were to meet. Everybody else decided to meet together, to share the experience. What else did Thomas have to do? Where else did he have to go? His disbelief of his friends’ testimony came after he refused their invitation to gather. It is pretty self-defeating, this demand: to see Jesus, to touch his hands or side, but not show up where Jesus in fact does. Maybe Thomas believed more than he let on, wanted it to be true, even if the most he could do was just show up. The preacher in me knows that lots of people come to church for just that reason: just in case what is said is true.

Jesus comes. Jesus speaks. Jesus shows, invites Thomas to touch his hands and side. Whether Thomas does or not is unclear.

Today I think this: I am Thomas’ twin (indeed, my own name is Thomas), but he and I are inversely related. That is, he demanded to touch the wound in Jesus’ hands.  I look at my hands and see that they are so wounded, so fisted and clenched, that they can never open—to him or anyone else—unless Jesus touches my hands. Thomas demanded to reach into Jesus’ side. I know my heart is so hard that it will never believe or love or worship unless Jesus reaches into my side to massage my heart. That Thomas would not believe unless he saw Jesus, touched Jesus; this Thomas, so locked away and barricaded, so skeptical and well defended, so in need of what he alone can give—this Thomas cannot believe unless Jesus comes in and touches me, that my doubt may give way to faith and trust.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

John Dornheim, a native Long Islander,  was ordained in the ELCA in 1990 and has served congregations in Pennsylvania. In 2001, he transitioned from parish ministry to health care ministry, first serving as the chaplain in a Presbyterian affiliated retirement community in Glen Arm, Maryland, and then as the chaplain at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore. Most recently he has served as the Protestant Campus Pastor at Long Island University, Greenvale, NY. At the present time he is involved in the establishment of an inclusive faith community, ministering to the none, nominals, and nomads as well as other people who have been disaffected by the church at one time but still have a spiritual hunger. Dornheim has also been a community activBio.

Read Acts 9:1-20
The day stretches out, full of promise like so many others before it. Nothing will deter Saul from his task. He is, after all, a professional, a professional persecutor, a man on a mission—no one is safe. Or so he thinks. However, he underestimates the God he serves.
Often religious fanatics, extremists, start out with the best intentions, but then they begin to believe that they can do better, that they know better. Sometimes they set out to build a better mousetrap.
Saul is in for a rude awakening. He has spent a great deal of time developing his vision of the work that God intends that he do. Saul is not the first to put his imprimatur on God’s work; but in that post-Resurrection era, he may have been the most ruthless. Taking his cue from the Pharisees, he sought to be a Pharisee par excellence. Wrapped in the cloak of the law rather than being warmed by the gospel, he acknowledges the work to be done. The death of Jesus has not squelched the movement, and he finds himself determined to erase from the face of the earth all of Jesus’ adherents who sought to keep the message alive. After all, God has called him to do this; it has become his all-consuming vision.
In order to correct that vision, God takes the drastic step of dimming Saul’s sight, even to the point of blinding him for three days. That might not seem like a long time considering the number of years that Saul has persecuted Christians. At the right moment, God sends Ananias to Saul to help guide him to the Light. The eyes of Saul have been shut, but now those eyes will see God’s purposes more clearly.
Think about a time in your life when your understanding of God’s plan proved wrong. Whom did God send to assist you?

Not turkey, which is our default setting for holidays, nor beef or even fish—though fish would make sense, really, since the first symbol of and for the church was not the cross but a fish—but ham.

Turns out there is in fact a reason for it—a theological reason for it: Resurrection! Jesus raised from the dead!

Resurrection is the explosion of God’s light into human darkness, the beachhead of God’s relentless onslaught against the dug-in principalities, the heavily armed and fortified powers of our death-loving, death-dealing culture: so fallen, so fascinated by, so saturated with death.

But Resurrection is the grave-emptying eruption of God’s life, God’s unmerited grace, rolling over all the Enemy’s tiger teeth, all the tombstones of law and futility.

Resurrection is the cataclysmic detonation of God’s unrestricted benevolence! By the resurrection of Jesus we have been unbound, set free, liberated.

And a part of what we have been liberated from is the old dietary codes: in other words, by grace alone we can eat pork!

Christ is risen! Pass the bacon and sausage!

The Lord is risen indeed! Eat some Easter ham!

I don’t know, though. Ham does not have quite the same cachet as turkey, nor Easter the same build-up (or let-down!) as Christmas—which leads Will Willimon to ask why Easter is not as big a deal, celebration-wise, as Christmas. He goes on to answer his question: we have all of us experienced, know how to celebrate—even comidify—birth. But Resurrection is harder, way harder. Only one, as of yet, has experienced resurrection. And there is no way to sell it. Besides, if birth is blessing, Resurrection too is blessing, but only after it is also judgment. Easter is God’s YES! to be sure, but it is also God’s NO! to the ways we typically think, act, bow to empire, impose our wills, live day to day, and do business. It thus calls us to see, to act, to trust in something outside our narrow experiences.

A lot of Christians don’t sing with much gusto on Resurrection Sunday—as if maybe they don’t much believe it, or at least not in a way to change much day-to-day, not really. We may be glad the church preaches the Resurrection, if it does, but most of us think more in terms of rebirth, Spring, the circle of life, or something. Resurrection does not square with the way we understand or live our lives, the ways we understand or die our deaths.

Shocking as it is, though, its very weirdness is commendation. As Dorothy Sayers said:

It is the dogma (that is, our preaching) that is the drama—not beautiful phrases, not comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and moral uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but they may realize that here is something that one might be glad to believe.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers. How do they strike you? What insights or questions do these reflections raise in your mind and heart? Where do the scriptures this week intersect with what is happening in your world?

Holly Miller is the author of 14 books, included a textbook on magazine writing. She teaches at Anderson University and is a publications consultant to Lilly Endowment, the Center for Congregations and In Trust.

Read Acts 5:27-32
Depending on the situation, we might view persons who practice civil disobedience as activists, heroes, and martyrs. Or, if we don’t agree with their cause, we might dismiss them as dissidents, troublemakers, and rebels. Paul urges us to “be subject to the governing authorities” and warns that “whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed” (Rom. 13:1-2 ). His rationale is that God has chosen society’s leaders; therefore, they are worthy of our obedience. But what happens when a leader’s word seems at odds with God’s word? Which takes priority?

The apostles clearly defy local authorities when they continue to preach and perform miracles after the high priest has ordered them to stop. Does their defiance make them heroes or rebels? martyrs or dissidents? “We must obey God rather than any human authority,” explains Peter, who has no misgivings about standing firm against the governing council. The apostles bear witness to God’s work in history through Jesus Christ to those who bear some responsibility for his death. They courageously stand before the council stating that Jesus was raised by the God of Israel; God has exalted him as an act of mercy toward Israel and will offer repentance and forgiveness to Israel.

The apostles’ unshakable faith and Spirit-filled lives affirm their understanding of accountability to a higher power. God has commissioned them to carry on the work of Jesus Christ, and nothing will deter them from that assignment.

History is replete with persons who risked their lives for the faith. Like the apostles, they adhered to their principles even if civil disobedience meant incarceration or death. We tell and retell their stories to encourage a new generation of activists, heroes, and martyrs.

Lord, may we never confuse human laws with your law. May we respect the former but worship the latter. Amen.

Are you sitting on the edge, waiting for something to happen?

Maundy Thursday is an edge moment. We are on the brink of celebrating Good Friday, the pivotal moment that speaks of God’s act of salvation.

The miracle of the “man on the edge” in John 5:1-9 speaks to me of more than this man’s circumstances. I think it can be read as a parable as well. For years this man had been trying to find healing. It demanded that he get himself into a position in which he could receive this gift. He had to get himself to the pool every day. Furthermore, he had to get into the pool at the right moment, either by his own strength or with the assistance of someone else. This man did not succeed in those efforts but found healing only through what Jesus did for him.

Do you see the link between this event and the story of salvation? How appropriate for us to read this passage today. Symbolically, we are at this edge moment. It represents our failure to save ourselves. It doesn’t matter what we do, try or devote our life to, it simply cannot address the problem of our own fallenness. Good Friday up to Easter Sunday speak of renewal, of God saying, “You can’t do it in your own strength, in your own way.” We need Jesus.

See yourself at the pool. What is stripping you from experiencing wholeness? How have you tried to fix it? Now Jesus comes to you. He does not scold you for not succeeding. He does not condemn or degrade you. He asks, “Do you want to be made well?” Yes, you may say, like this man, that you had already done everything in your power. Embrace this Holy Week and allow Jesus to do it in his power.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. During the Lenten season, he has been expanding on the themes in the book’s daily readings on this blog. Wessel invites your comments and questions.

How many times have I read this story in one or the other of its forms? It is the only miracle recorded by all four gospels, and so we come and sit before it regularly, but most often we grab a quick morsel, just preach it again. So many times I have preached this text, and from one predictable aspect or another: we are the befuddled disciples, who do not know what to do in the face of the many but do as we are told with what we have and somehow everyone gets fed. Or we are the little boy, just giving what we have been given, what we have been saving for ourselves, and somehow everyone gets fed. Or we are Jesus—kind of, sort of—with compassion for the crowds, maybe, or not so much compassion, but we tell everyone to sit and we pray over what we have been given and somehow everyone gets fed.

Yeah, you know, whatever.

But today, sitting once again before the text, I was given something different. I heard a different voice. Not a loud voice, just still and small—but incessant too, demanding to be heard. And what I heard is something I had never thought before.What if I am the bread? And others like me likewise? And not much of me, but whatever I am, just a plain barley loaf or a dried fish, but given to Jesus either by my parents’ prayers or my own volition, so that he can pray over me and distribute me to the crowds? So that other hungry souls can be fed I can see that. Feel that.

But what if, on the other side of that, I am the “leftovers”: one of the scraps cast aside when the crowd is sated? A piece of what I used to be, just a crust? The best part of me, after all these years, just eaten up by the crowds; there is nothing much left to be done with me but to be cast aside, on the ground, away?

Only Jesus says, “Gather up all the pieces, so that nothing is lost.”

And so the disciples gathered up all the pieces, the scraps and crusts, and put them in twelve baskets. Anyone who knows anything about scripture knows that “twelve” always refers, one way or the other, to the people of God, the children of Abraham, the disciples—Jesus says that what is left at the end of the meal, even the little pieces, they too are to be saved.

The pieces of my life, maybe, or what’s left of my ministry—its crust. “But the crust is where all the nutrients are,” says a friend. “Yes, but the crust is what most people cut off, or throw away.”

But Jesus does not, and will not. He commands that even the pieces be gathered into his baskets, so that nothing of us is lost.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

Truth is, being a Christian does not mean that life becomes easy. It is a life of sacrifice, a life of humility, a life that requires forgiveness, compassion, patience, peace, and hope. All of this is asked of a Christ-follower in a world filled with the opposite. It is a difficult life, but we have the knowledge that God is present, loving, and involved. God knows this life, for it is clearly reflected in the story of Holy Week.

Have you ever asked yourself, “What is good enough for Jesus is good enough for me.”? Think about this during this Holy Week. Think of this question in the light of your life circumstances. Then also think about this. The story did not cease at the cross. It ends with life, new life, a resurrected life with Christ.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read John 12:1-11
It’s an odd way to begin a week, even for the Gospel of John. Jesus is in Bethany being entertained by his good friends Mary and Martha. The Gospel writer casually remarks that Lazarus, whom Jesus has just raised from the dead, sits there at table with them.
Whom he has just raised from the dead ? Imagine the oddness of being seated at that table!

“You know our rabbi, Jesus, and next to him is our brother, Lazarus, who died last week but now, thanks to Jesus, is back among the living. Make yourself comfortable in the seat between them.”
“What sort of week have you had?” you ask politely.
Your dinner companion replies, “Well, I was sick unto death, then I was entombed for three days. Now Jesus has raised me from the dead, and I’m here at my sisters’ dinner party. How was your week?”

Where are we? Welcome to the wonderfully strange world of the Gospel of John and to the holiest week of our year. God is on the move. Jesus sits at table with us and whenever Jesus shows up, hold on to your hat: corpses rise from the dead; we face the shock that God is more than we imagined; the predictable, dull world is rendered strange; and even a dinner table can be a dangerous place.
It’s Holy Week. Be prepared to be shocked by Jesus; made uncomfortable, confused, raised from the dead, and the familiar world made odd. Our salvation draws near, too close for comfort. Something odd is about to happen, God with us.

Come, Lord Jesus. This week shock, surprise, wake us up, startle us with your strange glory. Amen.

Not that I am impressed with an achievement or anything like that. No, not at all. I am surprised when I reach into a jacket pocket and find my “long-lost pen,” or when I open a book I stopped reading a while ago to find an envelope with a bit of money in it (never much but enough to make me smile). It is quite common for my family to hear me say, “Ah, that’s where I put it!” Do you have moments like these? I’m glad that I am not the only one.

You would think that we ought to remember important things like where we put our pens or place the car keys, but we don’t. At the time of putting things down or away, we are confident that we will know exactly where these things are, but it does not take long before we ask: “Now where did those things disappear to?” or even better “Who took my stuff?!”

I know I’m forgetful and I also know it will not be the last time that I lose something or “find” something. For this reason I not only write constant notes and create alerts on my phone but I also keep notes of my prayer life. Every so often it is helpful to go back and see what I prayed for last week or the week before. Then I stand astounded again. God had been working in my life even when I had forgotten about asking for God’s intervention. In Luke 17:11-19 we read of the one healed leper who turned back to thank Jesus. I don’t know if the others had forgotten about their condition. I doubt it. What I find inspirational in this story is this man’s decision to return and give thanks. He remembered where his healing came from.

If it feels to you that God is not involved in your life, why not join me in keeping a prayer journal. It need not be anything elaborate. Start off small by beginning your day with your Bible and appointment calendar side-by-side. As you do your devotions, pray for each appointment, each person whom you plan to meet. Write down what you pray for. At the end of the day, open your calendar again and reflect on those appointments and meetings. Perhaps you will be pleasantly surprised to see how God had been guiding you, almost unnoticed, throughout your day.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

I don’t think the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were bad people. We tend to speak of them as the villains of the Gospels. They certainly get your back up as they always seem to be plotting a way to catch Jesus out. I see the Pharisees, Sadducees, and teachers of the Law as people dedicated to God through their faith, resolute and steadfast in standing up for what they believed in. They were devout in their religion, convinced that their commitment to God through adherence to the Law was to be seen as the example of what it meant to be people of faith.

By asking one question, Jesus draws these devout men to reconsider the practical implications of their devotion. The dilemma Jesus’s question creates is whether their faith had become so heavenly minded that it was of no earthly good. Did they believe so much in the Law, in the understanding that the Torah was the guide for true godly living, that it stripped them of compassion and led them to a path of apathy when confronted with suffering? This passage shows that their devotion to the Law was one-sided, or to be kinder to them, leaning to one side of the Law and hence unbalanced. They loved God with all they had but failed to love their neighbor by not attending to this man’s dignity. They did not have to heal him, but the lack of their commitment to the second half of the Great Command is revealed when they first need to determine whether it was right for the man to be healed on the Sabbath or not!

This scripture passage reminds me that my relationship with God should always translate into actions of love, compassion, dignity, and grace. When my faith becomes detached from this world, I will fall into the same trap as did these men of faith: religious apathy.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

The time came for prayer. I strode over to the man in the wheelchair, laid hands on him, and started praying. Nothing happened. I prayed louder. Nothing happened. I waved my hands and quoted scripture. Nothing happened. Oh dear, didn’t I have enough faith? No, surely it was this man: he didn’t have enough faith. Then I felt a hand on my hand. The man looked up and said, “Wessel, I did not come to this service to be healed from paralysis. For this, I found healing long ago. I came here to ask God to help me to forgive.” What a humbling lesson.

Luke 11:14-17 is a striking story of how people viewed their opinions more highly than the miracle that happened in their midst. Their voices grew louder while the voice of the healed man faded into the background. This still happens in your life and mine. Instead of being too sure, certain, or vocal about how God works in the world, I prefer now to spot and appreciate the presence of God in every moment. Celebrating moments of Divine reminders of God’s presence—seeing acts of kindness, generosity, healing, reconciliation, love, justice—calls me to humility. Does this mean that we should not try to understand life? No. Not at all. It does mean that we should not take ourselves so seriously that we miss the gift of God’s presence.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Psalm 118:1-2
What does it mean to say that God is good? In our everyday speech we proclaim the goodness of everything from food to movies. We wear our good shoes with our good clothes. When my dog does what he’s expected to do during our morning walk, he’s a “good boy.” We relax with a good book, fight for a good cause, and shop for a good buy, which is not to be confused with our common farewell: good-bye.
One of the most common adjectives in English, good is often the first word in the morning and the penultimate word at night. Good is not bad, but it’s not that great either. In the world of modifiers, good seems middle-of-the-road—perhaps even boring.
So what does it mean that God is good?
This psalm, intended for use in worship, gives the community the opportunity to proclaim in unison God’s goodness. In ancient times and today, no matter what we bring with us to worship—our pain, our failures, our sin, our disagreements—we can declare one thing in full accord: God is good!
The worshiping community, in proclaiming God’s goodness, highlights the covenantal relationship between God and God’s people. God not only created the universe and reigns over all, but God is good! The Holy One faithfully fulfills the covenant, without regard to and even in spite of our human failure to be obedient. And that’s a good thing.
The only conceivable response to such one-sided benevolence is thanks and praise.
Dear God, we give you thanks and praise for your goodness. As we reflect on our own lives in the light of your goodness, we can see more clearly the ways we have failed to live up to your desires. Forgive us, and strengthen us to fulfill your purposes. Amen.

“I will never cheat on you again”; “I will never lie to you”; “I will never tell…”; “I will never drink/use drugs again.” You’ve heard these words before. I know. Never is a long time.

Naively I thought that I could pledge my word to never lose my temper with our children, that I would never show signs of irritation with my wife, or that I would never tire of seeing to the needs of those placed in my pastoral care. Life tells me that I have failed several times. But people have always been gracious to forgive. Times of renewal come when I am tempted to say again “I will never.”

Similarly, I have also said, “I will never be able to forgive”; “I will never talk to them again”; or even “I will never trust you.” By God’s grace I have failed here too. You see, what we feel passionate about in the moment may be projected as something of permanence in the future. Trouble is that we do not know what the future holds. Situations change, people change, our perspectives change. I cannot make promises for the future, but I can commit myself anew in each moment. This carries, for me, greater weight and integrity. It is easy to say to my wife: “I will never stop loving you.” It is more profound to say and to show her in each moment “I love you.” My hope is rather that at the end of my life, I will be able to look back and then say “I never stopped loving you.”

In scripture there is One who is able to speak for the future, and will not fail. He once said, “I will never leave you…”—Jesus.

The difference between these two points is found in our availability and our ability to listen. When one wants to be right, there is no truth but your own. Your ability to see another perspective becomes clouded by stubbornly clinging to your own perspective. Some years ago I saw a photo in a newspaper depicting protest action around the issue of same-sex marriage. On the left of the photo were placards of those who obviously opposed same-sex marriage. On the right were placards of those supporting same-sex marriage. Separating these two groups another poster appeared. It read “John 8:32 ‘The truth will set you free.’” I could not quite figure out on which side of the argument this person stood. He could have been part of either group, using the same text to advance his particular argument.

This picture reminds us that truth, especially God’s truth, is much greater than my opinion. If I want to be right, I become set in my ways, quick to judge, and will protect my territory with all that I am worth. If I choose to work for what is right, I am forced to keep quiet and to listen. I often have to listen to both sides of a story, only to discover that there is a third perspective of which I was never aware. In Matthew 17:24-27 Jesus chooses to act for what is right and not to be right. He raises his concern (or objection) but still acts in a way that will not strip anyone or anything of dignity.

I pray that in all my actions and words today, I will have the courage to stand for what I believe is right but in a manner that conveys the love, grace, and compassion of our God.

P.S. You can read more about the illustration of the placards in my chapter “Whose truth will set us free?” in What are we thinking? Reflections on Church and Society by Southern African Methodists (edited by Wessel Bentley and Dion A Forster).

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

I struggle to remember sermons, but one statement in a sermon preached by our minister when I was a young boy has stuck with me as a profound truth. The minister said, “If you think you can surprise God, then remember, God has seen it all!” Yes, God has been around for a very long time. God has journeyed with billions of people before us, listened to prayers similar to ours, intervened in situations that may be new to us, but that are old hat to God. No, we do not surprise God. God tends to surprise us.

In the miracle recorded in Matthew 9:27-31, Jesus asks, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” It is one thing to lift up our needs to God in prayer; it is another thing altogether to trust that God has the sufficient ability, perspective, and will to minister to us. The Lenten journey reminds us that we are not the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-in-control people we think we are. There is only One who is truly omnipotent, omniscient, all-embracing, and eternal. We have the privilege of calling Him “Abba.”

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Isaiah 43:16-21
Memory of God’s works takes different roles in our faith. Sometimes we recall the past to remind ourselves that God remains with us. I sat with a friend who was suffering greatly from the complications of a rare form of cancer. We talked about hope in the midst of a bleak outlook. She recalled times when she experienced God’s provision and faithfulness. It did not change her circumstances, but it encouraged her and renewed her awareness of God’s presence and faithfulness.

In this reading, memory plays another role. The people are not to recall the past so that they will be ready for God’s new work. The opening verses evoke the memory of the Exodus, specifically when God brought the people safely through the sea and into the wilderness—a place of struggle as well as a place of revelation. There they dealt with scarce resources and murmured against God. Now God promises to do a new thing by making a way in the wilderness where rivers will run and praise will resound.

Forgoing that Exodus memory is not a critique of the memory; rather, the focus shifts to awaiting the new thing that God will do for the people. As in every generation, our task is to remember the past but even more to ready ourselves for what God seeks to do now.

This readiness does not come easily—especially to those who “remember the former things.” The church has wrestled with many issues, such as slavery, style of worship, war, role of women. It has taken much prayer, conversation, and discernment. It can take a long time, if ever. Still God promises to do new things and calls us to follow on that new way.
O God, you continue to do new things for your creation. Help us to see and respond to your action. Amen.

One Sunday morning, while I was preaching, I heard a commotion at the back of the church. In came a homeless man, barely able to stand up straight as he was clearly inebriated.  Being the new minister in this congregation, I did not know what to expect. Were the Stewards going to escort him out of the building? Would someone make him sit at the back of the church, where he would cause the least amount of disturbance? Then, to my surprise, the leader of the Young Men’s Guild got up from his chair (front row, on the isle) and walked to the back. I stopped my sermon mid-sentence, staring in silence. He took the man by the hand and led him back to his own chair, right in front of the pulpit and asked him to sit down. The leader looked up and said: “Moruti (Reverend), this man needs to hear the gospel first!” He turned around and found a seat near the back of the church, perhaps where this man would have been placed.

I will forever remember that moment. What are the signs of a healthy church? Well, for one, if the community shows hospitality, care, but most of all, love to the “undeserving.” I am sure that Jesus was and continues to be proud of this congregation.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

My favorite Morris the Cat commercial featured Morris in his chair. From off-camera comes a voice: “Come on Morris, chase the ball!” A red ball rolls in front of the chair. Morris barely notices, turns his head slightly away and says, “I’m not feeling very athletic today.”

We sit before our Table. From off camera, beginning with Jesus and echoing ever since, comes a voice: “Come on Christians: feel the love! Let’s celebrate our unity!” To which many seem to respond, “I am not feeling very Eucharistic today.” Who knows all the reasons why we any or all of us might feel less than Eucharistic, but some of it has to be cultural.

Dean Obeidallah has recently written that we live in an era of “Instant Outrage”: “Never,” he says, “have so many be so outraged by so little.” (http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/01/opinion/obeidallah-outrage/index.html?hpt=hp_c2) In the old days, he says, if something offended you, you had to write a letter, put the letter in an envelope, stamp the envelope, put it in the mail, wait three days for it to arrive—then double the time to hear back, if you ever did—but it gave you time to simmer down.

Now, with Twitter, Facebook, email-forwarding, and the like (and no matter, really, if what you are forwarding has any basis in fact), you can lay your outrage out there for everyone to see immediately; and feed off everyone’s outrage. And in a given day, in a given news cycle, in the unending eternity of a given news week, somebody somewhere is outraged about something all the time—insensitive entertainers, corrupted clerics, Washington’s gridlock.

Obeidallah says that our instant outrage is, among other things, distracting (remember last week’s blog about sloth?): we get so agitated about the little stuff that we don’t see the real stuff, so aware of our differences that we do not see our unity (he didn’t say that, but could have).

Lent is a time to confess that we are so often divided, one from the rest, by our instant outrage. And old grudges. And by easy offense. Yes, and by hard insensitivities. And by cold impatience. And hot-button politics. So many things to distance us, to make us bite and devour one another, as Paul says in Galatians 5, so that we may each and all of us feel, on a given Sunday, less than Eucharistic.

The fruit of the Spirit may be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—but that fruit gets blighted sometimes under the hot lights of this contentious culture. And if we are not mindful of conditions—which is to say, if we do not remember who we are as followers of Jesus: that we are those who, when the culture does its “distract and divide and conquer” thing, we live and think and act otherwise—if we do not remember who and whose we are, we can not only find our own spirits blighted but discover that we are turning up the heat by joining-in.

I wonder if part of our Lenten work this year might be to remember that Christians are those who are to live otherwise: the flesh of God’s message and ministry of Reconciliation in the world. In sum, Christians are those who, even when they don’t always feel it, are determined to be very Eucharistic.

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

Everybody around them withdrew into their own cocoons, not wanting to get involved. Some hid behind newspapers; others pretended to fall asleep, while the odd person here and there all of a sudden started to scratch around in the seat pockets. Who knows what they were looking for? I must admit, I didn’t know what to do either. I spent the forty-minute flight praying for both these fellow travelers. And then the Spirit spoke, reminding me of Jesus’ words “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “Lord, please not me. Choose someone else.” But no, the prompting of the Spirit persisted. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. All I managed to do was to lean over to the gent next to me and say “I am so sorry.” I don’t know why I said it, but the anger melted away from his brow. “I am sorry,” he said, “and God bless you.” Yes, God blessed us with something special in that moment.

Until we disembarked we spoke about reconciliation, South Africa, and what a gift all the different people of this country are to one another. Sometimes healing comes slowly, gently, but perfectly in God’s right time.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Luke 15:1-3, 11b-19
Parables break open to reveal treasures. The diverse gifts appeal to different tastes and interests. Consequently parables are always old and ever new because the one who hears is ever changing and always in a different place.

One of the treasures of this parable resides in its revelation of disappointment and loss. The father in charge of the family has a plan. But the son who asks for his inheritance early (thus implying that his father has already died to him) throws a monkey wrench in that plan. His son has a different idea about how life will turn out—an idea that deeply disappoints the father.

The father’s disappointment calls to mind our own experiences. Our dreams and plans, while good, often don’t work out. Change seems to be stalking the edges of our life’s designs. Our hard work to secure a desirable future often results in disappointment and grief. With change being the one constant that we can count on in life, loss becomes the consistent reality.

This reality can burden our moving forward into the future. The son’s decision undoubtedly saddens the father; he may struggle to stay on an even keel. His son’s leaving brings shattered dreams and a broken heart.

We too experience such loss and grief in our lives. We face disappointment when life doesn’t turn out the way we think it should. Moving beyond the pain of the losses of the past requires that we open ourselves to the forgiving spirit of God’s love. If we cannot grieve the losses and accept the freeing forgiveness for the future, the weight of that ungrieved loss will break us. What loss do you need to name and grieve?

Give heed to my pain, O God, and give me courage to face my disappointment. Amen.

When I see wildlife, experience nature at its best, I cannot help but breathe differently, to reduce my pace, stop talking, and start listening. We all need these promptings. What are yours? What makes you stop whatever you are doing and to “draw aside”? In Mark 7:31-37 we read about Jesus drawing a blind man aside. I find great value in this part of the text—Jesus drawing him aside. I believe that God often has something to say, but we can’t listen, for we are either too enveloped in our own activities or we prefer to engage God on our own terms.

For this reason, it is vital for every person on a journey of discipleship, to recognize the moments when God draws us aside. Those moments are filled with healing.

It is easier said than done. Consider the neighbors who party until the early hours of the morning, the stranger who cuts in front of you in traffic, the person arrested for abusing the fragile. And what about the person who can’t wait to spread negative rumors about others? It is not easy to love our neighbor. It is equally difficult to imagine that God loves that person as much as God loves me!

The symbolism of people kneeling at a communion rail speaks to me of God’s undiscriminating love. In the congregation where I serve, there are people of all different races and cultures. There are extremely wealthy people and people who struggle to survive on a government pension. There are people of high social standing and people who are usually ignored. There are people who hold different political views and who are quite open about their perspectives. Yet,  when we kneel together, we are not separated at a table for the rich and one for the poor, one for white people and one for black people. No, we kneel together at one table, alongside people who in some way or another differ from me. Then I think, where in the world will you find this? Everywhere else there is always an in-group and an out-group, my group and your group. Not at the Lord’s Table. This is the place where God reminds us that God love us the same, and therefore we have a divine calling to do the same.

Be encouraged today to love your enemies, to feed them when they are hungry and to give them something to drink when they are thirsty. As Abraham Lincoln once said: “The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.” Jesus said: “Love your neighbor.”

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

…another portent appeared in heaven: behold a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars in heaven and cast them to the earth…

Horrible as this picture is, it only gets worse: the red dragon faces the crying woman, stands before her so as to devour the baby she is birthing. But the male child—and no doubt this time who it is: Jesus—who will rule the nations with a rod of iron, John says—was caught up to God; the woman fled to the wilderness; and war broke out between Michael and his angels and the dragon and his angels.

The ancient enemy, as John envisions him, does battle with the saints of God, and the great red dragon makes some headway: his tail sweeps down a third of the stars in heaven. And a third—but only a third—of the saints are lost.  The war will be won—in the End. Until Then, the battle continues, a great grappling between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, righteousness and evil, the dragon and the church.

That very battle is what John describes in Revelation, the sometimes violent struggle into which we ourselves sometimes find ourselves drafted. But I was reminded again this week that the battle is not always so obvious as that picture, the dragon not always so visible. The struggle is not always even “outside,” in the heavens or on the earth.

For John, the red dragon is Rome, the city built on seven hills, with ten great emperors. Rome occupied Jerusalem and persecuted the people of God. The Romans beat, whipped, and crucified Jesus—tried to devour him, and also his followers. Roman emperors persecuted, tortured, killed some of Jesus’ disciples. But it was Rome that fell. The dragon was destroyed. That is the story John tells in Revelation: not the end of the world but the end of Rome.

But as the Reformer John Calvin taught us, whatever the “discreet history” or meaning of a biblical text, so many other meanings are present. John may have Rome in mind, but he both describes and condemns all empires, not only ancient ones, who by their arrogance and force of arms enforce their own version of brand peace over against the vision of God’s kingdom. John describes and condemns all lesser rulers and authorities, and not just political, along with all lesser powers and principalities too, who in their quest for power and ascendency suppress and oppress the voices of God’s powerless children.

Be any of that as it may, I have been thinking again this week about that red dragon, that seven-headed monster that rises up to wage war on the saints, to devour God’s purposes. I am sure I am neither the first nor the only preacher ever to make the connection—but I have been thinking how that dragon stands before our hearts, threatens every labor of faithfulness, bites us each and all in at least these seven ways: anger, pride, lust, greed, envy, despair, sloth. Those “heads” snap at me, at all of us, without ceasing. And should I ever think that through prayer or fasting I have the dragon at bay—that is only my pride talking.

My own personal seven-headed dragon will not be defeated until I exhale my last breath, till I drag that beast with me through the Jordan: only those holy waters are powerful enough to slay red dragons. Till then I remain “officially at war” against the beast, and I must remain vigilant: must continue to examine myself…examine myself. Our culture, of course, teaches us just the opposite, whispers in our ears to examine everyone else, to blame everyone else. But St. Anthony says that a Christian’s most important work “is to take the blame for our own sins before God and to expect temptation to the last breath.”

Yes, sometimes the dragon is outside, at loose in the world. But every day the dragon stands before us, wanting to devour our faith, our hope, our love, to sweep us down into the realm of merely earthly concerns.

Question: We are sometimes uncomfortable with mythic language, or even the language of sin. How might a recovery of that language or an examination of the seven deadly sins aid our Lenten disciplines?

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

Pamela C. Hawkins is a United Methodist clergywoman with a heart for contemplative prayer and imaginative writing for the Christian spiritual life. She is the author of The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent, Simply Wait: Cultivating Stillness in the Season of Advent, and Behold: Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent. She and her husband, Ray, live in Nashville, Tennessee, where she serves as Associate Pastor at Belmont United Methodist Church.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Isaiah 55:1-3
He was young, tired, hot, and skeptical. Since early morning, he had been selling papers at the intersection in an upscale business area. Homeless for months, he still felt awkward on the streets, unsure how to approach cars waiting for the light to change, whether to make eye contact or not, or where to find a restroom if he needed one.

When the young woman drove up to the corner and rolled down the car window to buy a paper from him, he wondered if he had heard her right. “What?” he asked.
“When you are done, come to our office and get some lunch and water. We’re right down the street,” she replied.
“What does it cost?”
“Nothing.”

“What do I have to do? Listen to a talk or something?” he asked, having been warned by the street veterans.
“No, nothing. Just come get some lunch and water. We have plenty,” she said again. “I hope to see you.”
Nothing makes sense here. How can anyone get food without money in this neighborhood? This is a trick, some undercover plot to get another homeless person off the street. Or it might be a humiliating joke at the expense of an inexperienced young man. Water for nothing here? Food at no cost?

“All of you who are thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!” (Common English Bible). Different words from a different time and place, but in this Lenten season both invitations, that of Isaiah and of the woman in the car, remind us of God’s life-giving, covenant-shaped feast. A feast set by love when those who are faithful share what we know to be true: that God’s love is everlasting and is for everyone.
God of hope, you are bread for our hunger and water for our thirst. You sustain us by your Spirit that we might become bread for the world. May we listen, change, and love. Amen.

Each year we celebrate January 22 as Matthew’s second birthday. We remember this day as a day of new beginnings, giving thanks for second chances and having our boy with us, healthy and strong. Mark 5:22-43 recounts how Jesus revived Jairus’s daughter. I wonder what Jairus did after his little daughter was raised from the dead. He strikes me as a loving father, and I am almost certain that this resurrection moment featured regularly in their conversations. Perhaps they too commemorated this day, giving thanks for the precious gift they received from Jesus.

I cannot help but draw a spiritual parallel in this instance. If we as earthly parents celebrate when our children experience renewal, doesn’t God rejoice when God’s children come to moments and experiences of renewal and restoration? Can you remember the day when your life changed? Do you celebrate the moments when God’s touch transformed your life? Perhaps we do not pen these into our diaries so that we can remember these moments in future. Perhaps we forget. I believe that God never forgets, and this is the reason that whenever God looks at me and you, God says, “This is my beloved child … they were lost, but now they are found.”

As I surrender my life to God anew, I feel God’s arms wrapped around me as tight as Jairus’s around his little daughter. Do you feel it too?

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

My name is Wessel. I am the third-generation Wessel in my family. In the small mining town where I grew up, the name Wessel Bentley is well know. My father and grandfather were legends in the mining sector. It was therefore no strange occurrence that when I introduced myself to people, they would ask: “Are you Wessel Bentley’s son?”

I am proud of my name. When I became a minister,  people started calling me Reverend. I received a doctoral degree, and people referred to me as Doctor. For a while, it was nice to receive the recognition of my call and my work as people used these titles in addressing me. That was until the day I took the time to find out what my name meant. One interpretation of my name is that it means “steadfast.” I had to journey with this interpretation for a while and tried to make it my own. I asked, what would it mean if I were a “steadfast husband,” a “steadfast father,” a “steadfast person” and a “steadfast minister”? I soon realized that in my very name lay something more important than any legacy, title, or position. My name has a meaning, principles toward which I can strive. I now prefer people to call me by my first name, and I hope it says more about who I am than any title I may possess.

Isn’t it wonderful to know that over and above this, when God calls our names, the tone of God’s voice speaks of affection, love, compassion, and grace?  Names are not always affirming, especially when people use names to marginalise, oppress, and harm. Like the demoniac described in Mark 5:1-15, we start believing that we are the names we are called. This is a common phenomenon in circles of abuse where those on the receiving end of violence believe that what they are experiencing is somehow normal or deserved.

When Jesus calls our names, it is life-giving. It restores dignity and tells us that we are loved. I hope that each person will find meaning in his or her name, but even more, that each person will hear the voice of God call that name in love.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. Here he expands on the themes in the book’s daily readings and invites your comments and questions.

I was reminded of the time Frederick Buechner’s therapist told him to write out a dialogue with his long-dead-by-suicide father, but to write with his left hand. Why? Because his right hand was a novelist’s hand, a writer’s hand, an adult’s hand. With his right hand he was used to creating and crafting meaning, forming words for effect. His left hand, though, was a child’s hand, untrained in the writing of words, unable to form or craft meaning. To write with his left hand might allow him to tap his heart more than his brain, to unearth the long-buried rawness and immediacy of the tragedy.[i]

As my friend suggested, I took a spot over to one side of the sanctuary—the left side, it occurs to me now—and I simply sat there for a while, determined not to craft or form any prayer but to just clear my mind, to just pray. But I could not do either thing. My brain was racing, careening, drowning under wave after wave of recent disappointments, abiding pain. I screwed my eyes shut against an erratic montage of hurtful images, painful discussions, fears, and hopes.

I felt caged, claustrophobic, crowded. I wanted to run away, but my legs would not work. I wanted to evaporate, to disappear, never to be seen ever again: to be invisible. “I don’t want to be the pastor anymore,” I said, my head lolling back, my swollen eyes gazing toward to the rafters of the sanctuary which looked like the ribs of a ship…or a whale. I was Jonah, in the belly of the fish—panicked, trapped.

Getting up to leave, I glanced down to see a United Methodist Hymnal in the pew rack. My chin twitched. I paused, sat back down. I turned quickly, almost instinctively, to page 878, The Order for Evening Prayer. I have turned to this very spot so often over the years, and yet it was as if I were seeing it for the first time. I took a deep breath and, who knows why but loudly enough for me to hear myself I began the liturgy: “Light and peace in Jesus Christ.”

I paused, as if waiting for a response. I muttered, “I could wish for light and peace.” But then, more boldly, I said, “Thanks be to God.”

Thanks for what? I was weary, feeling very much alone, my prayer perfunctory. Still, I took a deep breath, plowed ahead, saying words at once so familiar and so strange: “We praise and thank you, O God…”

And at the word We, tears leapt to my eyes as if I had been slapped, but I continued: “for you are without beginning and without end. You created the day for the works of light and the night for the refreshment of our minds and bodies.” (“Our minds and bodies,” I paused to say again, emphatically).  “Keep us now in Christ. Grant us a peaceful evening, a night free from sin, and bring us at last to eternal life…” (Us, us, US!” I said)… through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

It was not the prayer itself—though it is beautiful enough to bring tears. No, it was the awareness that, in that moment, I was not alone at all. I was not even praying by myself. Somewhere, other believers were also praying. All the people I could remember praying with me before, few though they were, were praying with me still. Saints and apostles, prophets and martyrs—the whole company of heaven, that holy host of others, on that distant shore but near as my breath—they too were praying with and for me, and Jesus himself was also praying: all of us, praying together in that very moment, though I sat in the sanctuary by myself.

It was a most powerful moment for me, and in it a thought crystallized: the premise and the promise of communal prayer, and its power, is this: that even when the “community” is invisible or spiritual, it is still real, and whenever we are praying our prayers, we are not alone, even when we are by ourselves.

What might it mean to you to remember that even when you pray by yourself, you are not alone? How does this idea of praying reinterpret for you the “communion of the saints”?

Author Tom Steagald is working on a new book about prayer for Upper Room Books. Each Wednesday he shares some of his thoughts as the book takes shape. He welcomes your comments.

I live in South Africa. I grew up during the Apartheid era and, as a teenager watched Mr. Nelson Mandela being released from prison. I saw how society changed. The signs of “Whites Only” in our parks, separate entrances for white people and black people at the post office, the obvious absence of black children at our schools will forever haunt me. Apartheid was law. More than that, Apartheid was endorsed by a large portion of the Christian church.

Can you imagine the inhumane practice of performing the “pencil test” by which State officials decided whether a person was to be classified as either white or black? They stuck a pencil in a person’s hair and if it fell out, they were classified “white.” If it stayed, they were classified “black.” It was the law that everyone needed to be classified according to race, which in turn determined their rights and privileges.

Praise God that those days are past. But people’s suspicion of the law has remained. Is the law truly just? Of course we need the law to govern order in society, and we hope that the law will achieve justice. But the law should always be tested, determining whether it is a true reflection of that which is just. In Mark 3:1-5, Jesus tests the Pharisees’ motive for using the law. Their personal moralism in this instance would have left a person in need unattended. Jesus reminds us that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. As I read the account of Jesus healing on the Sabbath, Jesus sounds a warning against the practice of pious moralism, especially when it denies us the opportunity to love God or to love our neighbor.

My prayer for you this day is that God will be part of your moral formation, not for the sake of being able to exercise moralism and judgmentalism but to be set free by God’s power to love.

Wessel Bentley is author of THE MIRACLES OF JESUS: MEDITATIONS AND PRAYERS FOR LENT. Join him here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays during Lent 2013. He’ll be expanding on the themes he writes about in the book and inviting your comments and questions.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

My father, aged eighty-two, passed away following unsuccessful heart surgery. Hearing the testimonies at his funeral from family, friends, and coworkers, I felt amazement, gratitude, and a sense of pride. Several weeks later, my twin daughters turned twenty-one, and I was struck by the question “What will be my legacy?” What strengths and values of my dad are alive in me? How good a father have I been? How will I be remembered?
Not all of us have children or grandchildren. Yet most persons hope to leave the world a better place because of their living in it—to love and be loved, to do good and show respect, to act justly and fairly, to care well for the earth in our small patch of the planet.

In an ancient land of many gods, a land marked by territorial wars between small kingdoms, the member of a small group receives an unlikely call and a bold promise from the one God who claims sovereignty and allegiance. In Genesis 12, Abram accepts God’s call to gather up his people and journey to a new place. Later, in Genesis 15, after politely rejecting gifts from King Melchizedek, Abram is gifted by Yahweh, told that he and Sarai will bear children and prosper.

This small group had few of the assets that might ensure security in today’s world. Yet God promises that they will grow and have their own dwelling place. In truth, the coming increase of this tribe looks far from pretty. Yahweh’s declaration invites faith; it does not ensure a trouble-free future. Abram’s trust in God’s promise is deemed righteousness: he is worthy of God’s blessing. In a sense, Abram’s legacy begins with his choosing to be predisposed toward the promise and blessings of Yahweh.

God of hope, I look to the heavens. May I see the stars of your blessing in my life and in our world. Amen.

Nothing challenges prejudice like having to walk in another person’s shoes. During our first years of ministerial training our mentor, Rev. Paul Verryn, constantly exposed us to people, situations, and places that left us completely out of our comfort zone. Of course none of us thought that we had prejudices or biases. We were ministers! We treat everyone equally! Well, so we thought. During those first few years, I spent several nights sleeping in informal settlements; we slept on the inner city streets of Pretoria in the dead of winter; we bandaged the wounds of the homeless in Johannesburg; and the list goes on. I shall never forget the generosity of the homeless, the welcome of the destitute, and the care offered us by the street children when they gathered cardboard boxes and made beds for us to sleep on.

I am extremely grateful for these experiences, because as difficult as they were, I learned a lot about myself and started looking at the world from a new perspective. I am thankful that these moments of ministry enabled me to be more honest with myself regarding my own biases. I recognize too that the biases and prejudices that still exist in my life are places that need God’s touch. I need to be healed, continuously.

Along with the man in Mark 1:40-44, I pray that Jesus will make me clean. Before I became aware of my own brokenness, my prayer always used to be that Jesus would make them clean. What a change! Sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to look in the mirror with honesty. To do so often requires that we exchange our shoes for those worn by “the unclean.”

I pray that as we  journey through this Lenten season, God will bring about change so that we can truly love our neighbor as ourselves.

One of the greatest gifts my mother gave to us as children, was the constant reminder that we did not leave God at church. It became a familiar part of our daily conversation to hear: “Remember, the Lord is always with you.” We heard this as we climbed out the car to go to school, or when we left to play at a friend’s house, or when we cycled to our different sport activities. “Remember, the Lord is always with you” were often the last words we heard our mother say as we went on our way.

Now, I must admit that there came a time when my response to this reminder became: “Yes, mom, I know . . . see you later,” without giving this blessing a second thought. To me it became too familiar, too much part of our daily interaction. I ceased to take notice. It was only much later in my life, when our son was born with severe heart complications, that these words made sense. In our time of anguish and despair, the one thought that brought hope and life was remembering my mom’s words: “Remember, the Lord is always with you.” It took four months and a major operation before Matthew’s heart was mended, but the Lord’s presence touched our lives with peace long before that intervention.

God’s presence everywhere. Wherever you may be reading this, look up, look around, and say to yourself “God is here.” Try it. It won’t take long. Begin doing this throughout your day. When you sit in a meeting or if you stuck in traffic, God is there. Will you be meeting with someone to have a serious conversation? God is there. Allow God, no allow yourself to experience God in every space, every experience. Moreso, remind your loved ones today: “Remember, the Lord is always with you.”

The Lenten journey has started. I am always struck by the words “From dust you were made and to dust you shall return.” They reminds me of my mortality. These words provide a sobering realization that I am human, I am fallible, I will not live forever; and, despite my best efforts, I do fail in my walk with God and my fellow human beings. When I make the sign of the cross on people’s foreheads at the Ash Wednesday service and utter these words, I see expressions of shock, amazement, and reservation in their eyes. Then come the words: “Turn from sin and return to Christ.” These are words of hope, declaring that the ash is not where it ends. In fact, the ash is where it starts. Easter Sunday will be the end, celebrating being raised to new life in Christ.

Lent is also traditionally the season of fasting. I heard a good teaching on fasting, which I hold on to during Lent. It goes something like this: We fast because…

1. We acknowledge that all things come from God. It is too easy to get to a place where I believe that I am self-made, that my achievements, luxuries and my life itself are deserved. What happens if I give it all up? Does my perspective change when I view all things in my life, especially the gifts and luxuries as God’s gift to me of which I am but only a steward? Whenever I yearn for that which I surrendered for the Lenten fast, I return to prayer and give thanks for all that I have.

2. At times things get in the way between me and God. What has replaced your first commitment to God? Who or what do you really call Lord? We profess to be Christ followers, but choose first to listen to the whisper of that first cup of coffee, the screaming calendar with all its appointments, the voices of daily distraction, leading us away from loving God with our entire beings and our neighbors as ourselves. When I am drawn to return to that which I have given up, I again turn to prayer and ask, “Lord, you speak first. What is your will?”

3. It gives us insight into the needs of others. I may have given up watching television during Lent, and it may feel like something annoyingly insignificant. But for millions of people around the world the absence of a television is a daily reality. Not only do they not have televisions, but they do not have electricity. It brings me to realize that there are things that I take for granted on a daily basis, which are in fact tremendous luxuries in comparison to the realities faced by millions of brothers and sisters around the globe. Then I turn to prayer again and not only pray for those who are less fortunate, but ask “Lord, how can I use this Lenten offering to bless those in need?”

Lent is therefore a time of gaining perspective on my own life, focusing on where God is on my list of priorities and on how my faith journey leads me to minister to others. Can you see the Great Commandments reflected in this? “Love God, love neighbor as yourself”?

Friends, blessings to you as we journey this Lenten road together.

But then—though we do not always remember, and because God is good and gracious—Moses went up the mountain again so God could give another set of tablets to Israel. If the first time Moses came down mountain he glowered, his face red with rage, when he came down the second time he glowed, his face full of God’s peace. Moses did not know he was glowing, and he did not stop glowing either. His appearance scared the people. And so he had to veil himself, cover his face, to live with the people.

I have always thought it so sad that Moses had to hide the deepest, most meaningful part of him—his relationship with God—because that was the very part of him that scared folk. When he talked to God, he took the veil off. But any time he was with other people, he put the veil back on.

This is a silly thing, in a way, but do you know what I have noticed? (And I noticed it first among preachers.) When preachers get together, we talk about, well, almost everything: our churches, our people, our budgets, our appointments, our bishop, our moving plans, whatever. Also: politics, sports, the price of gas, retirement funds, and a host of other things.

Do you know what we do not talk about? Our prayers. Or what we believe most and deepest about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit. We may discuss theology, but we do not talk about our own faith, at least not much.

We have faith, presumably—all of us answered the call into ministry one way or the other. But somehow that is the thing we have most trouble talking about. We do not open our hearts to one another. Not often. Now and then. But infrequently. And even then, very tentatively.  It is almost as if we veil that part of ourselves. Why? For fear if we tell the deepest truth of ourselves it might scare somebody? Or is it that we might scare ourselves in the telling of it, make ourselves appear or feel foolish or fanatical or something?

It’s not just preachers, though. A lot of Christians have trouble talking about their faith—with each other, much less strangers. Which is to say, when Christians get together in their Sunday school classes or small groups, even at lunch, they may talk about the church, the preacher, the lesson, the budget, even the Bible maybe; but when it comes to telling the deep truth of our faith, not just what we believe about something but what we really believe—not on the top of our heads but deep down in our heart of hearts—that is so much harder.

We keep ourselves veiled from each other, and maybe for fear of revealing ourselves, our fears and frailties, our hopes and prayers; maybe for lack of trust that others will handle us with care, will treat the tenderest, “quickest” parts of our spirits with appropriate care and respect.

I am wondering if part of what we might “give up” this Lent is our “veil,” whatever it is we have draped over our face or heart to hide the deepest part of us? I wonder if we can begin, or begin to begin, speaking the truth of ourselves to one, or two or a few others. Not just what we think about something, but the deep truth that makes us tremble for hope or fear?

We could start by doing as Moses did: unveil ourselves to God. Yes, of course, God already knows every heart and mind. But it can be such a healing thing to tell God what God already knows: because to tell it means we have to know it, and if we know it and tell it, we are inviting God to join us in it. Then, with that practice, we can begin to unveil ourselves to each other, reveal our heart of hearts…

If we observe that kind of Lent, we may be ready for a real Easter— the veils lifted, the stones rolled away, our spirits glowing.

What would you like to reveal to another about your faith but are afraid to? Why? Is there anyone with whom you might take the risk?

Susan A. Blain is Minister for Worship and Spiritual Formation in the United Church of Christ

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Isaiah 58:1-12
Transfiguration ecstasy seldom lasts long. We get glimpses of glory only, as the disciples discover when they try to persuade Jesus to stay apart with them on the mountaintop. Isn’t it enough to have this vision, this clarity, this moment of meeting God?
But Jesus is already ahead of them, hurrying back down into the world of suffering, complexity, sin. He knows, and they must discover, that the holy does not linger in such isolation. A struggling people calls, and Jesus will respond. Following the call to Jerusalem, where his life will end and new life begin, will take all Jesus’ prayerful courage.
The season of Lent invites us to follow Jesus on this journey to Jerusalem, deeper into the midst of the struggles of the world. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear and hands willing to work, we may discover some unexpected place where God is calling us to the work of transformation. Isaiah decries false righteousness while calling the people to justice and true righteousness. Only through repentance may false righteousness give way to a change of life. Isaiah points the way—the cries of those yoked by injustice, hunger, illness. Can engaging their need become our point of meeting God?
Despite the people’s fear of God’s abandonment, verses 9-12 encourage possibility of restoration: “If you remove the yoke . . . if you offer your food to the hungry,” then your light shall rise” (emphasis added). God intends salvation, not condemnation. If we can find prayerful courage, Isaiah tells us that meeting God will offer its own kind of ecstasy: our own parched places may become a watered garden, and we will find the glory of God in strength, confidence, and creativity to repair the breach and restore the streets.
Holy One, give us prayerful courage to seek you, and in finding you, give us joy to join your work of transformation. Amen.

Wessel Bentley will be our guide in exploring The Miracles of Jesus during Lent 2013. He will be posting blogs in this space that expand on the content of his book. Upper Room is also offering an online Lenten retreat with Wessel beginning February 13 and ending on March 30. Check it out here and sign up—http://elearning.upperroom.org/events/78 Registration is open until February 28.

Look for Wessel’s first post here on Ash Wednesday, February 13.

I

When I traveled to the Holy Land I found myself almost instinctively engaging in that particular discipline. What amazed me was the rugged topography of Israel—the stark contrasts all around. Galilee was relatively green, but in the south, in Judea and the “disputed territories” of the West Bank, there was almost no green at all except for the fabulous symmetrical rows of date palm trees that, here and there, formed oases. Otherwise, it was all rocks and crags, mountains that erupted almost straight up out of the ground.

What might it mean, I wondered, to realize the Ten Commandments were given in such a context, or that the children of Israel spent years in such an environment, between Egypt and the Land of Promise? Jesus himself went into that very wilderness to be tested and tempted, to determine what sort of Messiah God would have him be.

What might such a terrain tell us about the sort of people we are to be? Or how our preaching and teaching sometimes goes awry?

As I considered that holy terrain, our spiritual homeland, it occurred to me that what many preachers and teachers do, or try to do, and indeed what many people want them to do, is to round off the mountains, as it were: smooth the sharp edges, soften the crags, make the gospel “greener” than it is.

Now, of a certainty there is great comfort in the faith, and even in our stories. Jesus fed the multitude on “green grass,” for instance (a phrase that took on new meaning during my visit); but there is also a ruggedness to the gospel that we mostly try to smooth away. If God promises one day to level the grounds and straighten the crooked, that time is not yet; nor is that job ours. Till then will remain both the deep abyss (the Dead Sea) and great high peaks (Sinai, Nebo, Horeb, Hermon), and all manner of terrain in between. These holy grounds characterize not only our faith’s land of origin but also our own journey of our faith.

What does any of this say about prayer? The ways and sorts of prayers we might pray even now?

Caves here and there formed natural “cells,” places of solitude where monks, saints, and holy men and women through the ages entered to purify themselves from the corruptions of the world, purging their souls by prayers and fasting. They would emerge now and then, join their brothers and sisters for meals, more prayers, and  ritual baths. Their time in solitude founded the community; their community empowered their solitude.

Water from sudden rains—hard rains that produced dangerous slides and flash floods—would be captured by the many cisterns we saw, built to catch the torrential but momentary meteorological blessing. Long stretches of no rain at all—even in the rainy season—and long dry seasons characterized life in the desert. Such dry seasons characterize our experience of God’s presence. Refreshings do come, unexpectedly and often with overwhelming effect—more than we can absorb in a moment. What might we give to have a kind of spiritual cistern to catch it all? We might hold the blessing in reserve, drawing from them in the long dry seasons when it seems God is so very absent, when our spirits are so very dry and barren.

Or do we have it already? In the tradition and worship of the church, perhaps, a great repository of faith and guidance exists to help us in those barren nights when we cannot find the Almighty and feel our prayers are unheard.

But we must emerge from our cells (although for most of us, our cells are most often not places of solitude but isolation). When we come together, eat together, go down into the river of our tradition to pray, we might find a great washing, a deep cleansing. And whenever we do that, we find ourselves not only in a holy time but a holy place.

Tom Arthur is the second pastor of Sycamore Creek Church. He was appointed to this twelve-year-old church right out of seminary when Barb Flory, their founding pastor, a rebel grandma, retired in 2009. They meet in a school on Sunday mornings and in a diner on Monday nights and have a big crazy vision of launching seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week. Tom is married to Sarah Arthur (www.saraharthur.com), author of eight books including the best-selling Walking with Frodo and the upcoming Mommy Time, 90 Devotions for New Moms. She is also the author of God-Hungry Imagination with Upper Room Books. They have one two-year-old son, Micah, and are expecting a second child in July 2013. Tom’s website is www.aproperconfidence.net, named after a favorite book by Lesslie Newbigin of the same title.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Exodus 34:29
We all long for mountaintop experiences, even the most reserved and stoic of us. Deep down we want to experience such a closeness to God that the inner transformation spills out into the world through the shine on our faces. When we’re down in the valley, we wonder when we’ll next meet God in such a powerful way.
I enjoy backpacking. One of my favorite memories is sitting on the top of Clingman’s Dome in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was my first backpacking trip. I found it exhilarating to be higher than anything else, but I had hated every moment of climbing up that mountain. Three days of hiking over twenty miles with five stream crossings, signs warning us of bear activity, and seriously painful feet were some of the costs. While most of us value mountaintop experiences, we sometimes forget how much work it takes to get there.
In today’s reading, Moses has a mountaintop experience and encounters God in a powerful way. I wonder what it cost Moses to climb that mountain. While it took a heavy physical toll to get up there, I think the bigger cost was probably what Moses brought back down the mountain: the spiritual work of the covenant.
When God makes a covenant with us, our life changes; when our life changes, something must die for something new to be born. What did Moses have to leave on the top of that mountain to come down a transformed man? What old life, habits, customs; old ways of thinking, being, and doing did he have to leave behind to fulfill that covenant? That’s the real work of having a mountaintop experience—the spiritual work of dying to self in order to covenant with God.
God of the mountaintop, give us strength to do the work that we must do in order to meet you there. Amen.

I remember my first Bible. It was a Christmas present from my parents. On the cover it said, appropriately enough, “Children’s Bible.”

The title was inscribed over a picture of Jesus sitting on a rock in a meadow. He appeared quite serene, with blue skies above him and green grass at his feet—and children, lots of children, all kinds of smiling, laughing children gathered around him: red and yellow, black and white: it was clear they were precious in his sight.

And he was just as precious in theirs.

The picture did not end at the Bible’s spine. When I turned the Bible over in my hands, I saw more children coming to Jesus: running over hill, over dale, all of them on their way to him. I am not sure why, but somehow from the start I always imagined myself, pictured myself, in that crowd of kids—still at a distance but on my way, trying to get to where Jesus was. Others were already there, and I wanted to get there, to get close, but I was not. Not yet.

For a truth I still feel that way most days—that I am still at a distance, on the back side of the action, still trying to get to Jesus, to get as close to him as I can, as close as some others already are. And so often I feel that if I could just get a little closer to Jesus, just get past the spine, then all my skies would be blue and all my grass green. That I would always have a smile on my face.

The translation of my first Bible was King James, which is daunting for any child, all those thee’s and thou’s, all that stilted—beautiful but stilted—prose and poetry. Not how children talk.

Thank God for Mr. Sanford, my third-grade Sunday school teacher. He schooled us every Sunday in the books of the Bible: we learned to name them, to find them: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy… Matthew, Mark, Luke John…

I quickly learned where all sixty-six books are. But trying to learn what all the books mean, all the chapters, all the verses, that was another challenge altogether. Mr. Sanford tried to explain it, but some Sundays I could feel my eyes glaze over.

Take those two things together then: the cover and the text: together they are the truth I learned when I got my very first Bible so long ago: Jesus loves the little children, and not just the little children either: Jesus bids all of us welcome. But what we hear when we get close—which is to say, what Jesus teaches us when we are near enough to listen—is hard too. Very hard.

Forgive one another. Love your enemies. Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Abide in me.

Those words are hard to read; or if not hard to read, then hard to understand; really hard to trust, and harder to practice. Put a sweet cover on the book and it is still the Book, and still hard.

All these long years later, I still remember my first Bible. I am still trying to get to Jesus, trying to understand. My eyes glaze over sometimes, and I guess my heart does too, but I keep at it, because I have come to see that, while my parents handed that Bible to me, it was not a gift from them alone. So many others—so many others—gave their minds, their hearts, even their lives, so I could have this Word. So we all could.

Yes, I still remember the thrill: a Bible of my own! But I came to feel something else: gratitude. And obligation. Indebted to all those who gave me such a gift and responsible for what was in it.

How do you respond to this statement: “The gift of God’s Word evokes gratitude and obligation”?

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Read Jeremiah 1:4-10
God’s call to the young man Jeremiah follows the prophetic pattern in scripture: God calls; prophet responds negatively to the call; God empowers. Many of us have had just such responses to the call of God on our lives. God’s call brings fear as often as delight. God involves Jeremiah in a lifelong commitment to which Jeremiah expresses doubt of ability, but God promises to deliver and sustain.
Even before Jeremiah’s birth, God has consecrated him to this task. Many of us have a difficult time grasping thoughts of time “before” the womb. I have no grasp of me before me. Yet God reminds us that we have a “before” and that place is God’s. And, we remain God’s in our “nows” and our “afters” too!
Imagine being called. Close your eyes and try to close your mind as well, turning off distracting thoughts about this coming week as much as you can.
The voice began singing to you when you were still safely in your mother’s womb, singing to you the song of your life, telling you stories about a loved and devoted child, gifted by God and then sent out to fulfill the wonders of God’s kingdom among the beloved of God’s children. The story of our lives rests deeply inside each of us; it is the song that God sings to us. We can hear the familiar tune if we will only pause our minds and our lives long enough to hear its simple melody. Perhaps in his youthfulness, Jeremiah could hear the refrain.
I pray, gracious God, that I may hear your song and sing your words of my life. Amen.

That said, I have been thinking about the story in John 2:1-11, the story of the wedding at Cana when Jesus turns the water into wine and all that. It may be that the water he turned into wine was the water in the stone jars. Or it maybe the well itself  was changed (that is what my college New Testament professor thought). The disciples too were changed: already following Jesus, they saw the sign and “they believed in him.” That is an odd phrase, worthy of more exploration, but in sum: they, like the water, changed. And the steward was changed—his mood, at least—because the party was saved!

The servants? They were unchanged. They were there at the party. They did what Jesus told them to do. They knew what had happened, but they said nothing; they enjoyed nothing. And so, although Jesus provided the wine, nobody so much as thanked him because the servants said nothing either to declare or interpret the sign. I wonder how many times the church is just like that?

But I am thinking today about Mary. How does the story begin? “… there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and the disciples were also invited.” Rings true to every wedding I have ever known. Women, at weddings, notice everything! The shoes, the dresses, whether it all matched, or whatever, what was wrinkled, the flowers, the place-settings. Guys, on the other hand, notice … nothing! The women are crying, the men are yawning … or discreetly checking game scores on their smart phones.

Mary is there, while Jesus and the disciples are merely present. I kind of see them over to the side, off to themselves, wondering how soon they can leave without insulting the groom. Mary sidles over to Jesus and says, “They have no wine.” She knows. She knows because she is there: Mary is not just in attendance, she is attentive.

“So what?” Jesus replies, which is really about the tone you detect: “What do you want me to do about it?”

Mary does not say anything, not out loud, not to Jesus. She might have replied to his question, “Only what you can. Whatever you will.” That sounds like a prayer I sometimes pray—not original with me: “Lord, as you will, and as you know, help.”

To the servants Mary says, “Do whatever he tells you.”

I have long tried to imagine the look on Jesus’ face when he says, “Fill the pots … now, draw some and take it to the chief steward.”

Roman Catholics love this story, and it explains in part why not just Catholics but many others pray to Mary—because if Mary knows you’re out of wine or sick or something, she can make things happen. Jesus may be distracted or preoccupied, but she can get close to him; and at her word, miracles happen.

I don’t pray to Mary. But I pray like Mary. Try to pray like Mary, and I try to pray like that a lot. In fact, most of my prayers are intercessions: I come to Jesus on behalf of others, those who are sick or dying, and I ask Jesus to please do something for them.

We might all do well to pray more like Mary. To sidle up to Jesus—and yes, he knows everything before we ask, but we ask him again anyway, on behalf of our friends, when they are getting married or when they are dying or at almost any other time: we come near to Jesus and pray for them. It could make all the difference. Our prayers could keep the party going, like that day in Galilee, or really get it started.

As you  think about your worship and your own prayers, are you more like the steward, the disciples, the servants, or Mary?

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers. With Monday being a holiday, this post will give you thought for the weekend.

As we celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., allow Reverend Kang’s words to provide an anchor for your spiritual bearings. Commit anew to daily scripture reading.

Read Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
The walls of Jerusalem stand restored, but the Israelites still face many challenges. The land to which they return after seventy years of captivity is not a tension-free utopia—despite their high hopes. They feel uncertain about the future of their community.
One challenge requires that the people determine what is essential or indispensable and what can be set aside. They realize that they have indeed lost what was most essential to them—their spiritual heritage. They now see the need to restore the foundation of their faith.
So the people ask the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses. They stand when he opens the book. Men and women listen to the word of God attentively as Ezra reads from early morning to midday. Ezra reads, and the Levites interpret among those who gather; the occasion becomes a time of spiritual reawakening. The power of the written word and the acknowledgment of the gap between the law’s expectations and their daily lives and practice bring the people to tears. God’s word convicts. Though the people weep, Nehemiah declares this day to be a holy day, one set apart by God. Such a day is one of celebration with eating, drinking, and fellowship, “for the joy of the Lord is [y]our strength.”
Now the people finally “get it”; they understand the reading that has been given them. They go off to feast, “eating and drinking and including the poor in a great celebration” (The Message, Neh. 8:12). God’s word convicts and restores. Truly, the joy of the Lord comes in the joy of returning to God’s word.
O God, convict and restore us. May we celebrate the joy of knowing you as the source of our strength and salvation. Amen.

Thomas R. (Tom) Steagald, pastor of Lafayette Street United Methodist Church in Shelby, NC, continues his blog series on prayer.

When I first met Mrs. Hessie, who died the other day at age 102, I noticed two things immediately.

One was her eyes, the way they would light up, sparkle, offer greeting and welcome—more eloquent, more gracious, than any word she might ever have said. In all my years of ministry I don’t think anyone I ever visited has been more visibly glad to see me.

The other thing was this: she wanted to speak, tried to speak, and did speak a little—a few slow words those first few visits, but so slowly and with such effort that sometimes she would look at me as if we were playing a game. She wanted me to finish the word, guess what she was saying, fill in the blanks, so we could move ahead in the “conversation.”

In time, though, she was unable to speak at all—though her eyes still sparkled and her body still rocked. So I did the talking, read her the Psalms, mostly, and more than once Psalm 71, which I read when I buried my own grandmother.

I always lamented that I met her after her real talking days were behind her. I can only imagine what stories she might have told—about her family, her church, her children, her roses. I lamented, until one day, by chance or by grace, I came across a line from St. Isaac the Syrian, an Orthodox saint: “Speech is the organ of this present world. But silence is a (sacrament) of the world to come.” Speech is the organ of this present world. Words are the best we can do on this side of Jordan. And words are good things, beautiful things, though they can be used for bad and ugly purposes. The human tongue was created for praise though, to our shame, we may use it for cursing.  But it is by speech—whether songs, creeds, books or testimonies—that, in the present world, God is glorified. Speech is the organ of this present world.

“But silence is a sacrament of the world to come.” Mrs. Hessie understood about sacraments. Sacraments are “means” of grace, “delivery systems” for God’s presence and love. Silence is a means of such grace: when we are silent, we make room for the Almighty One, and thereby offer a praise, and a prayer, beyond words, beyond even our best words to say or sing or testify.

How does the old hymn put it? “Lost in wonder, love, and praise?” Silence before God offers us time and space to be lost in just that way.

Long before she died Mrs. Hessie was already giving God that special place, that special praise. And now we believe and trust she is there—full of wonder, love, and praise; her eyes sparkling as with the starry host of heaven, her body free, moving in time to the rhythms of eternal praise.

You think she was glad to see me? Think of how she looked when at last she saw Jesus.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Amory Peck was born into a Methodist family, in a small town in the Midwest. Her church taught her that she was loved by God and by them. Amory has served in the local church and beyond, holding office at the district, conference, jurisdictional and General Church level. For eight years she was Conference Lay Leader, and she served on the board of the General Board of Church and Society for four years. Amory was head of the Pacific Northwest  delegation to General Conference in 2008 and the first elected layperson in 2012. In addition she served on the national board of Affirmation (United Methodists for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns) and coordinated the Pacific Northwest Reconciling Ministries Network. Amory attempts to live her life truthfully and openly.

Read Psalm 36:5-10

The Cascade Mountains extend from Southern British Columbia, through Washington and Oregon, to Northern California. The tectonic forces that shaped the Cascades also tightly folded the layers of 55 million-year-old sandstone, shale, and coal to create the Chuckanut Mountains. During the last Ice Age, glacial ice more than 5,500 feet deep covered the Chuckanuts. As the glacier advanced and retreated over the rocks, Lake Whatcom was created. Nearly twelve miles long and a mile wide at its broadest point, Lake Whatcom has thirty miles of shoreline and holds about 250 billion gallons of water.

Kokanee salmon, cutthroat trout, and smallmouth bass inhabit Lake Whatcom. Ringing the lake, Pacific tree frogs and Northwestern garter snakes share the area with great blue herons, the bald eagle, and downy woodpeckers. Mountain beavers, striped skunks, red fox, as well as deer and coyotes roam the area. Western hemlock and Douglas fir cover the hills. Salmon berries and red elderberries can be found.

Those are the facts of the area where I live. Every season gives me joy, every mood and look of the surroundings speaks to me. But the psalmist reminds us that the reality of it all is so much more than a beautiful world. The psalm assures us that God’s love is as high as those mountains, as deep as the sea. God’s steadfast love enfolds me, enfolds all of us, including the eagles, foxes, and trout.

My retired life is filled with family, friends, good books, and volunteer work. I also live with congestive heart failure. When I let my thoughts linger on that piece of who I am, I feel diminished. That’s when I look to the world around me. The strength of those depths and heights is the very reach of God. I rest, with a grateful heart, in the assurance of steadfast love.

Creator God, creatures great and small are blessed to live in the protective shadow of your wings. Amen.

Now and then I pray with a group of monks. Entering the cool chancel of their basilica, I take a seat near them but not among them: at a respectful distance, you might call it. They enter, robed, and cowled some of them, in ones and twos. They genuflect to the altar and take their assigned seats.

The choir stall where the monks sit is divided, flanking the area between the altar and the Abbot’s chair at the very front. For several minutes there is silence—both to allow the brothers and their guests to arrive and also to allow space and time for monks to center themselves, to reassemble themselves as a group, to pray for prayer’s sweet return. In fact, there is a sweetness— a fragrance—in the room: the slate floor, the worn pews, the woolen cowls, a slight must from the missals.

Soon the monks begin: call back and forth to each other across the distance. It is the ordinary form of their praying, but it strikes my ear as more than tradition. It seems as if the monks are reminding each other what, if they prayed alone, they might forget to pray; if indeed, alone, they prayed at all.

There are several psalms. A reading. Silence in between. Soon, they rise, offer corporate intercession and benediction “for our absent brothers.” They close the prayer books, file out, bow to the altar in turn, then bow again, to each other, their eyes averted. The coolness, the silence, the smells linger.

Three times a day, sometimes more, monks gather to pray in just such a way. They order their lives by prayer. Prayer intersects their work, and their work feeds their prayers. Day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year for a lifetime. It is a holy, forming work, and often shames my sputtering, sporadic orisons.

Ora et labora—prayer and work. That is the regimen of a monk’s life. Prayer and work. Working and praying. Working at praying: that too. Prayer is hard work, a hard thing, maybe the hardest thing, a fight to the last breath it has been said. Thomas Mann, author of Death in Venice, once said that an author is one for whom writing is more difficult than it is for others. Counter-intuitive but exactly right.

So maybe Christians are those for whom prayer is more difficult than it is for others—but who keep praying none the less, who struggle to the last to speak and to listen, who know that, as St. Theophan the Recluse said, “Prayer is the test of everything: if prayer is right, everything is right.” We confess that we have not got it right yet, and so we keep at it.

Annie Dillard tells of a well-known writer who “got collared” by a university student. The student asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?” The writer thought for a moment, said, “I don’t know. Do you like sentences?” The writer, she says, “could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences? If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, ‘I liked the smell of the paint’” (The Writing Life, p. 70).

Do I like to pray? I am sixty years old, almost; do I like to pray? Do I like the smell of prayer?

Yes. I do. But it is hard work. Hard to begin, hard to maintain and sometimes, by grace, hard to stop once we have started. So how to start?

Not alone, I think. Or not always. And especially not at first. We need help. We need brothers and sisters. We need the apostles, the prophets, the martyrs, our elders and betters in the faith. We need the tradition and friends to help us … the Psalms and the “company of Jesus,” as Eugene Peterson calls the church.

We need help to do it right.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions is a longstanding—and beloved—resource published by Upper Room Books every year. Each week’s readings are reflections on scripture passages in the lectionary for that period.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers.

Steve Shussett is the Teaching Presbyter and Stated Clerk of Lehigh Presbytery. He is also a spiritual director, retreat leader, and writer for a variety of publications. He previously served as Associate for Spiritual Formation for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) and as a pastor in Virginia and Maryland. He is a graduate of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, where he received his Doctor of Ministry in Christian Spirituality. Steve and his wife, Alicia, live near Allentown with their son, Daniel, a high school sophomore, while daughter Rachel is a first-year college student in western Pennsylvania.

Steve relates a story of his coming to faith in Jesus Christ from another faith tradition in The Upper Room Disciplines, a daily devotional guide based on the Revised Common Lectionary.

Read Acts 8:14-17

Upon learning that I was raised a Jew, Christians often want to know how I came to follow Jesus. “When were you baptized?” is quickly asked; but as Acts demonstrates, it isn’t an easy question to answer.

I’m blessed to know the moment when God went from a fuzzy “Somebody out there” to the One revealed in Jesus Christ. I can tell stories of my baptism by water and the gift of having my gracious, if perplexed, family attend. But when asked the simple-sounding question, “When were you baptized?” I find myself taking a deep breath and long pause before stammering my response.

Was I baptized in the Spirit when friends asked me to attend church with them and I went, even though nothing in my life hinted at accepting such an invitation? What of the many college classes I took on Christianity, participating and engaging professors more than I did in other courses? Or when all I listened to was contemporary Christian music as it put into understandable words the faith that I couldn’t understand?

The people of Samaria accepted the word of God as their cornerstone, living faithful lives that others could see. Peter and John come onstage and the Spirit enters the scene in a way that no one then or now can witness or prove, that wind that “blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8).

If asked, “When were you baptized?” what would the Samaritans say? And when someone asks you that same question, will you point to your infancy or a day marked in red on your calendar? Or will you too pause and stammer, trying to sum up a lifetime of accepting the word of God?

O God, may I know your presence with me, confess my absence from you, and celebrate the faith-full life that is mine by grace. Amen.

This is true now as ever. Enuma Okoro reminds us, “The waiting of Advent is over, but we still wait for other things in our lives.” By the same token, as we rejoice in Christ’s birth, still we mourn the tragedies that have surrounded it. And later this year during Lent, the season of penance, we will not be consumed by repentance over past wrongdoings, but will also do other things and experience other emotions unrelated to the time of year. We influence time and time influences us, but neither controls the other.

Perhaps we should consider our calendar not as a dictator of experience but as a guide for reflection. Certainly the authors we have read during Advent have done this. How can we follow their lead? As we enter a new year, how can we remember the particular season we are in while remaining open to the full range of human experience?

A prayer for the new year: God, in the fullness of your time, help us to become the people you created us to be.

In 2013 you can not only read these daily devotions but also comment on them, ask the writer a question, and respond to others who are reading the same material each day. We are looking forward to building a community of Disciplines readers! Just sign in and add your comment in the Comments section following the Monday blog post.

Each Monday an introduction and the initial reading for the week will be posted. Come back to this Monday post throughout the week to continue the conversation about the week’s readings and prayers. How do they strike you? What insights or questions do these reflections raise in your mind and heart? Where do the scriptures this week intersect with what is happening in your world?

Tom Appel, a community organizer and writer in Nashville, Tennessee, offers the devotions for January 1–6. His theme is “Light in Darkness.”

January 1— Read Matthew 25:31-46

A good parable for a New Year with new resolutions. I’m struck by the fact that the sheep seem just as surprised as the goats by the way they have acquired their inheritance. Surely this equality of incredulity provides an important clue to understanding the way of both sheep and goats. The surprise of the sheep seems to rule out any idea that we can somehow discipline ourselves and strive our way into sheepishness; that we can wake up each morning and say, “Oh, you beautiful sheep, you are so good at blessing people! Now get out there and clothe naked Jesus, help stranger Jesus, and give food and drink to hungry and thirsty Jesus.” Neither do the goats (or so it would seem from their equally surprised response in this passage) go through life thinking, I am going to turn my nose up at dirty homeless Jesus, and I am certainly not going to visit murderer Jesus at the penitentiary.

If neither the sheep nor the goats went about intending to serve or neglect Jesus respectively, how can we choose to live as one or the other? I don’t imagine that my neighbors wake up desiring to snub those on the outskirts of society, and I know that I don’t have this sinister goal—yet I get a lump in my throat when I read this passage because I know that I am often rather goatish. What can we do? Surely we all want to line up with the sheep! Yet, it seems that despite our good resolve, the end result remains surprising.

What if the only way to see the lost and broken as Jesus did comes in getting to know Jesus so well that we can’t help but see the subtle and not-so-subtle glimpses of the divine even in the dirtiest of street people and those most broken?

Lord, apart from you I cannot see the world in love.
Thank you for this precious gift; please open my eyes each day
so that I become an instrument of your mercy and grace. Amen.

Photo courtesy of BrandX pictures

But do we really have to wait another 365 days for the joy that Christmas brings? No! According to the Christian calendar, we are beginning a new year. Our joy does not end with Christmas but starts with it. We often talk about “the Christmas story,” but while it is a beautiful story, it is only part of the story of Jesus and the story of our faith. Every point in this story, from Christmas to Easter, and even that long stretch we call “ordinary time,” provides reason for rejoicing.

Sometimes we have to look a little more closely to find the reason. Again we turn to Mary as an example, this time for her constant and faithful attention to Jesus. In Singing Mary’s Song, John A. Stroman writes about Mary’s continuous pondering and contemplation throughout the life of her son. She often remains a silent figure, but she is always there, watching and wondering what all she sees might mean.

Mary’s initial anticipation ended with the birth of her son, Jesus, but her story did not end there. She raised him, followed him, accompanied him to his death, and was witness to his resurrection. In a similar way, the season of Advent may have ended, but our story has just begun.

How might we remain present and attentive to Jesus and to each other throughout the year? How might we continue to maintain a spirit of anticipation and love?

As we anticipate the culmination of the Advent season, Enuma Okoro calls us to expand our understanding of family. In her book SILENCE she writes, “In the family of God, our responsibility to each other extends beyond race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and sexual orientation. When persons are in need, we all bear a familial responsibility to be present.” God created us—all of us—for each other. No matter how different we seem, we were all made in the divine image and belong to the same family.

We may find it easy to agree with this idea in theory, but practicing it requires, well, practice. Seeing people who are different from us as fellow divine image-bearers requires constant mindfulness, and treating everyone as family requires great effort. God, our parent, guides and helps us in this endeavor, but it will not be easy for us. We have to work at it, during Christmas and throughout the year.

What practices or experiences have helped you expand your understanding of family? As you gather with those close to you this Christmas season, how might you invite others into your family?

Mary provides such an example. This week in Singing Mary’s Song, John A. Stroman shows how Mary exhibited hope in dire circumstances. He writes, “Mary prevailed because she saw a new day coming. She spoke her hope into existence…She believed, even when it appeared there was nothing to believe in.” When God called her—a poor, unmarried girl—to bear a son by the power of the Spirit, she consented. When her son left her to spread God’s message of hope in a hostile world, she let him go. When he willingly walked to his death, she did not try to stop him. How could she have done any of this without the hope that her son’s life had a meaning beyond her wildest dreams?

As we continue our journey through Advent towards the source and fulfillment of our hope, how might you, like Mary, show hope in your everyday life? How might you become for others an example of hope in difficult times?

Our world often feels like the antithesis of holy community—a fractured, painful place in which evil takes control. We must remind ourselves that Elizabeth, Mary, and John faced the same problem. Jesus was born into a world with hungry people, frightened people, people who endured meaningless pain and suffering.

How can we build holy community in such a world? How did Elizabeth, Mary, and John do it? They waited for Jesus just as we do and they did not wait alone. They prepared themselves and called those around them to prepare as well. They loved and challenged each other, hoped and prayed together.

As we anticipate the arrival of Jesus, the Holy One, God calls us to prepare for his arrival. As we await the perfect holy community that only God can bring, we also must attempt to create holy community in our imperfect world. Okoro asks us, “What are we truly waiting for in this Advent and in our lives?” We are waiting for Jesus, but in some sense we are also waiting for ourselves. How long must we wait?

This week the Advent study SINGING MARY’S SONG reminds us that God came into the world as a human being, Jesus, at a particular moment in history, a moment chosen by God. Jesus brought the message that God loves us and is always present. Yet when a tragedy like this unfolds, the question hangs there: Where is God? Author John Stroman recalls getting news of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. A New York Times report described a Haitian pastor standing amid the rubble of his church and reassuring his listeners, “It seems like the Good Lord is hiding, but he’s here. He’s always here!”

But where? Where? we ask. The stories will begin to be told—of compassion and care for the people brought low by grief and anguish. That’s where we will find God—in the love and outreach of all who act to bring comfort and companionship to those who are hurting. Wherever you are, you can comfort one another by listening and loving. If children are around, be sensitive to their fears and sadness. This event will affect them. Here are some ways to respond to children’s fears and concerns: http://bit.ly/Y2up1q

Pray this prayer from today’s reading in SINGING MARY’S SONG: “God, we don’t believe you have forgotten us or are hiding. Your actions may be a mystery to us, but we believe your promise never to abandon us. Give us courage and wisdom to overcome anger with love, and evil with good. Amen.”

Okoro then invites us to “name empty spaces in our lives that feel as painful as the ache of a womb that refuses to carry life, the purpose for its creation.” Such naming can lead to some revelations if you take it seriously. “Barrenness is not always transformed this side of heaven,” Okoro comments. Indeed. Waiting may not be rewarded in this lifetime.

Where do you feel “barren”—underutilized, thwarted, wasted, unappreciated, unfulfilled, less than you might be?

How do you typically wait for change?

How might the season of Advent affect your attitude about waiting?

John Stroman is the author of SINGING MARY’S SONG, a resource for the season of Advent. Here he reflects on a theme in the first week of meditations in the book. We welcome your comments.

In our Advent meditations and reflection this week we discover how Jesus was born into a family that meticulously observed the law of Moses. Luke tells us five times that Jesus’ parents did everything that the law required regarding their infant son. On Jesus’ eighth day his parents took him to the Temple to observe the ancient ceremony for every Jewish boy.  There through the act of circumcision, Jesus became a member of the covenant community. By making their presentation to God the family wanted Jesus to be part of this community. Also, the law required that every Jew living within twenty miles of Jerusalem must attend Passover. We know from Luke’s account that when Jesus was twelve, he accompanied his family to Jerusalem for Passover.

There is always a temptation for religious observances to become an end in themselves. When one’s religious life is reduced to merely keeping laws and observances, one can lose sight of love for God and neighbor. When such experiences degenerate into mere observances they cease to relate to the meaning and challenges of contemporary life. When faith is no longer vibrant one’s life becomes dull and dreary.

Pressures from the hectic pace of modern life have reduced the practice of meaningful liturgy and ritual.  Many people no longer have time for prayer before meals, for serious sacramental reflections on daily family activity, because they do not eat meals together as families anymore. The family dinner table has succumbed to the world of cell phones, Internet, and text messages.

For many, religious rituals are reduced to church attendance at Christmas and Easter and to socially required ceremonies such as baptisms and weddings. Lives move at such a fast pace fulfilling secular interest that it jeopardizes any hope of experiencing the holy in the ordinariness of our daily activity. Technology lessens our desire to think about mystery. Years ago, when I was in seminary,  the futurist Alan Toffler reminded us that technology would lead us into a world of “high tech and low touch”; and so it has.

The ceremony that Mary and Joseph experienced in the temple that day was not a foreign intrusion into their lives, rather an expression of their deepest awareness and commitments. They saw God at work in the events they had experienced. Mary and Joseph’s presentation of their son in the Temple in the context of their Jewish community’s faith and practice challenges to us to recover a sense of wonder and mystery of God’s presence.

As secular interest seeks to jeopardize any hope of us experiencing the holy, our liturgy evokes power because words contain power. The Eucharist gives love a voice. The waters of Baptism put forth a promise of shared relationships among parents, congregations and God. In the Christmas Eve communion, N.T. Wright reminds us, “we are like the children of Israel in the wilderness, tasting the fruit plucked from the promised land. It is the future coming to meet us in the present.”

What Advent and Christmas rituals help you become aware of God’s presence?

Yes, yes, as usual, many folks jumped from the Thanksgiving table right into all things “Christmas,” but more people today are discovering the rewards of entering into the practices of the traditional church season of Advent. It’s a time to prepare our hearts for Christ’s entry into the world, a time to consider the spiritual growth engendered by waiting, a time to immerse ourselves in the stories preceding the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea.

This year Upper Room Books offers two new books for Advent 2012:

• Silence—and other surprising invitations of Advent by Enuma Okoro, and
• Singing Mary’s Song: An Advent Message of Hope and Deliverance by John A. Stroman

The two authors, expressing themselves in very different styles, both point us to the insights abounding in stories leading to the “main event” of Christmas. Enuma Okoro explores themes of longing and silence personified in Elizabeth and Zechariah. John Stroman delves into Mary’s Song, the Magnificat, to highlight the profound act of saying yes to God. If you are reading one of these books, we’d love to know where the meditations take you this Advent season. Add your comments here in the days to come.

These prayers from each writer’s first week of meditations bless our entry into Advent:

Enuma—”God, teach us to be patient during times that make us uncomfortable. Help us to open our lives to you in honesty and vulnerability. Amen.”

John—”Thank you, God, for Mary’s song of freedom and hope and for her leap of faith. Help us to pray as she prayed, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Amen.”

 

 

Thus began months of leaning into my computer, earphones glued to my head, straining to understand Henri’s words as he moved about the large room at St. Paul’s Church in Harvard Square, sometimes near and sometimes far from a small cassette recorder with built-in microphone. The room held five hundred people, and it was overflowing with students and townspeople eager to hear the renowned Harvard professor speak about Christian discipleship. To my ears, it sounded as if half the city had squeezed into the parish fellowship hall. People shuffled their feet and rustled notebook paper. The audience erupted in waves of laughter at jokes, inaudible to me, that Henri muttered under his breath. A baby, with evident pleasure, repeatedly punctuated one of Henri’s talks with the words, “Dada, Dada, Dada….” Another time, a woman close to the microphone asked softly, “What did he say?” Her friend responded, “I think it was something about…” and, not able to make out his answer, my mind drifted to the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where Jesus is delivering the Beatitudes. Someone toward the rear of the crowd is having trouble hearing the prophet and wants to know what he just said. A companion responds, “Blessed are the cheese makers.”

Yet even though my tidy plan to edit perfectly accurate and cleanly formatted transcriptions of Henri’s talks had been thwarted, and even though my head buzzed with the background noise that shrouded Henri’s words, it was fitting that I should be the one to transcribe these tapes. Indeed, it was a homecoming of the most wonderful kind. Here I was in his presence again, more than three decades after the conclusion of five years as his teaching, research, and editorial assistant at Yale Divinity School. The Dutch-accented voice, so familiar from hours together in classrooms, chapels, retreat centers, and social evenings in his home, rose and fell with characteristic passion as he tried to evoke the challenge and the beauty of following Jesus.  The central themes of his presentations, well worn through repeat appearances in books, articles, and lectures, but still fresh with the vital urgency of truly good news. I could easily visualize his large hands reaching out into the air around him as if he might catch and hold before us the wonder of life in the Spirit of God. Yes, it was good to spend this time with Henri.

Homecomings sometimes have a way of moving us from the present to the past and then back once more to the present, but a present now reframed by new meaning. Initially, in the “present” of my editorial work, I was seeking simply to extract from these difficult recordings a publishable manuscript for the Henri Nouwen Spirituality Series. Then, as I entered the soundscape of those Harvard Square tapes, the richness of long past years with Henri drew me back through corridors of memory, and I sensed the presence of gracious Mystery that often seemed to accompany him.  All at once I was dwelling in both that invigorating past and a transfigured present. As I felt myself sitting among those in the parish hall listening intently to Henri’s impassioned meditations on Jesus, and felt too the tension in my back as I tried to follow Henri’s words in the midst of the human and technological din, it suddenly became clear that I was actually experiencing the reality Henri was describing. How difficult it is to hear Christ addressing us in the midst of our noisy world! How challenging it is to follow him when so much around us vies for our attention and commitment!

Here I was, earphones plugged in, sitting at the point where past, present, and future converge in the simple words “Come, follow me.”

When did you first hear those words?

How did you respond?

“It’s in the context of community that we find the most compelling stories, the most adept evolutions of theology, the most cogent commentary, and the most miraculous revelations of God’s incarnation in real time…”

One of the common misunderstandings about writing is the notion that authors need isolation, retreats away from the action, and that we should be sequestered in order to do mysterious things like, “Find my muse.”

Creativity, according to myth, requires silence, laser-like concentration, and an environment free from busyness, noise, people, or other outside distractions. I’ve even heard writers buy in: “What I need is a few weeks of solitude to create my masterpiece.” And, “If I could just get some consistent uninterrupted time alone, then this pesky writer’s block would go away.”

Really? Write in a virtual vacuum? I don’t think so!

Irrepressible Life
Now I’ll grant that a few quiet hours might help me stay a step or two ahead of the grammar police in the copy editing department (no offense), but that’s only after I’ve gone toe-to-toe with enough real life to first write something that might need a little fine-tuning.

Inventiveness has to be built on constant interaction with real life and, most importantly, interaction with honest-to-goodness people who live in honest-to-goodness community. In fact, it’s in the context of community that we find the most compelling stories, the most adept evolutions of theology, the most cogent commentary, and the most miraculous revelations of God’s incarnation in real time.

Beyond Observers
Writers like to say we are professional observers. That may well be. But it’s not enough for us to observe community; we are also called to be conscious participants and purposeful creators. We need community to sustain us, to challenge us, to encourage us, to hold us accountable, to introduce us to the real stories of real people. That’s how we learn what it means to live the gripping saga of authentic life.

Living in community means making the conscious decision—moment by moment—to follow Jesus into the crowd, and to serve the people God loves.

Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.—Acts 2:45-47

“Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” – Matthew 18:19-20

In Matthew 18 Jesus comes at us fast and hard.

• We need to be humble, like children.
• Don’t do anything to compromise a child.
• If your hand offends you, cut it off.
• Go after lost sheep, and lost church members.
• Forgive one another till you lose count of how often you have forgiven.
• If you are not a forgiving person, then don’t expect any mercy when it comes to your own sins.
• Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

Hard teachings, radical ideas, but all with this common thread of “living in community” that runs through the chapter.

TWO OR THREE. Verse 20 offers the well-known concept of “where two or three are gathered together in my name…” The idea is almost exclusively used as a reference to prayer. But I like to think about it as a call to intentional community.

Two or three gathered together is community. And community is pretty much a necessary condition if we want to experience anything of Jesus in our relationships. We limit our understanding when we imagine this principle related to an “eyes closed with an Amen at the end” scenario. Whenever there are two or three of us, doing life together, in community, then Jesus promises to be a part of the equation.

ACKNOWLEDGE. Spiritual community may be at play simply because believers are in the same place at the same time. But, just like greeting a friend at a party, it’s only polite to acknowledge Christ’s presence. The Lord is funny like that. Never one to force the issue; never one to barge in and elbow his way to the front; not about to cough discreetly to announce his presence. Jesus knows where he’s not wanted.

Simply acknowledging Jesus takes our experience of community up a notch. We’re not so much “guarded” when we host Jesus; it’s more that we are challenged to bring our very best to the experience.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”—Luke 24:31-32

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.—Hebrews 10:24-25

I’m writing this post on a Saturday evening, which means I’ll be in church first thing tomorrow morning. There are several reasons for this, but one of the most compelling is how critical it is for me to be immersed in my community of faith.

• It may be a beautiful morning tomorrow, one that cries, “Golf!” or “Beach!” at full volume.
• Or I may be dog-tired and desperately in need of a couple extra hours of sleep.
• Or I may have this looming deadline that a long Sunday and a large pot of coffee could handily take care of.
• Or I may simply not feel like heading in to worship.

It’s up to me. I could go, or I could not go—my decision. I’m an adult now. I could go to church, or I could stay at home.

But I’m going to be there; you can count on it. There’s no “maybe” when it comes to church. Because everything I value in my life is encouraged, validated, fine-tuned, and restored in the context of intentional community.

INTENTIONAL

Yes, intentional. I’m using the word carefully. I’m a loner by nature—the kind of guy who could happily make his way through a week or three without having a conversation, or watching a TV show, or checking in with his kids. But I’ve learned over the years how important it is for me to invest myself in other people. I’m always glad when I do; I just have to be deliberate about taking the necessary steps.

Just because community is good for me doesn’t mean that seeking it out comes naturally, or that I don’t have to make any effort.

COMMUNITY AS DISCIPLINE

Here’s the thing. Irrespective of my “natural” proclivity to keep myself to myself, I still need the community of faith. It’s how – and why – I was created. God created us for community, deliberate relationship both with God and with other people; community is at the core of how we are designed.

Here’s how the idea was presented in my newest book, 10 Life-Charged Words:

The (person) who says, “I’m not any good at making friends” is no more —or less—in need of life-charged community than the [person] who has accumulated a dozen friends without even trying. We were created for relationship with God, and we were created for relationship with other people. Building community is absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to engage their full potential.

So I make the effort to attend my men’s group; I have an “accountability” covenant with a couple of friends; I talk about absolutely everything with my wife (especially when I don’t want to); I talk to at least one of my adult children every single day; I intentionally avoid sitting in the corner during gatherings . . . and tomorrow morning  I’m going to be in church.

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore. —Psalm 133

My husband and I arrived a half-hour early at the Old Town Presbyterian Church in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. I had remembered the quaint sanctuary from an earlier visit with my friend and co-author, Lucimarian Roberts, when I had been on the Gulf Coast to work on her memoir, My Story, My Song. Thinking back to last summer, I recalled hearing her strong voice as we sang familiar hymns and repeated the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed. I remembered, too, her gracious hospitality as she stood up during the service and introduced me to her church family as though I had been her best friend since childhood. Now a year later, I was standing in the small narthex of her church, preparing my grieving heart to celebrate Lucimarian’s eighty-eight years of life.

The short pews were filling quickly with other invited guests. As we slipped into a row and sat down, my husband gently nodded his head toward a pew nearer to the front of the sanctuary. I quickly recognized Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos, Debra Roberts, Ben Sherwood, all of ABC News. My heart was warmed, knowing that during the height of the national political season, these high-profile celebrities had paused to support their dear friend and colleague Robin Roberts, Lucimarian’s youngest daughter.

It was a humid morning as soft light filtered through the stained glass windows of the sanctuary which seats about one-hundred people. Soon there was a tap on my shoulder from someone sitting behind us. I turned to see a woman I had first met when I took Lucimarian to her friend’s funeral during one of my stays on the Gulf Coast. As the woman and I embraced, my eye caught a trio of young women who I knew to be Robin’s behind-the-scenes support system at GMA sitting across the aisle. I caught a glimpse of some of Lucimarian’s fellow church members, her neighbors, and a former local newspaper publisher. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. Over the months that we had worked on My Story, My Song, Lucimarian had introduced me to people in her community wherever we went.

That’s just the way Lucimarian was. Gracious and kind. Perhaps that’s why so many people at her Homegoing service spoke of how she made each one of them feel that they were her favorite. The thing is, it didn’t matter to Lucimarian if you were a celebrity or a pizza delivery boy, to her you were a child of God and that’s all that mattered. She had a gift for making everyone feel special.

During the service, I watched as each of Lucimarian’s adult children shared heartfelt remembrances of their mother. A nephew who had learned to play the piano at Lucimarian’s knee offered an instrumental rendition of “Blessed Assurance.” When he got to the chorus, people began to spontaneously sing, “This is my story, this is my song.” That’s when I shivered.

At the end of the service, the family members began to file out behind Lucimarian’s casket. In the shuffle of activity, I could hear a recording of Lucimarian speaking then breaking into song, “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be!” Everyone quieted to hear. I recognized it as the CD of her favorite hymns and spirituals she had recorded for her family just last year. By the time the rest of us began to file out, I could see Diane Sawyer singing the words with a smile on her face. Soon everyone was singing, with Lucimarian’s voice leading the way.

A few minutes later my husband and I were driving in the funeral procession along the Gulf Coast from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi National Cemetery where Lucimarian was to be buried beside her husband Larry.  It was just a week after Hurricane Isaac had made landfall in the area. Beaches were still being cleared of debris. Fallen tree limbs were scattered about and water stains were clearly visible. As we drove by Pass Christian, Lucimarian’s hometown, I thought about how many times she must have driven that stretch of the Gulf. I looked for the special tree that had been ravaged in Hurricane Katrina but later sculpted into an eagle in memory of her husband. Farther down the beach road, I caught a glimpse of Lucimarian’s favorite restaurant where we had dined on gumbo and Key lime pie. The memories of Lucimarian kept swirling through my mind.

As we turned into the national cemetery, my eyes were immediately drawn to a group of large oak trees at the entrance. They were a welcoming sight. Gracious and strong with a broad canopy, providing shade and comfort to passersby. Just like Lucimarian, I thought. My friend savored each season of her life journey and finished the race well, pointing others to God all along the way. That was her story. That was her song.

Missy Buchanan writes and speaks about the faith of older adults. Her books include Living with Purpose in a Worn Out Body, Talking with God in Old Age, Aging Faithfully.

Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts, 1924–2012

Tears mingled with sweet memories this morning as Upper Room staff learned of the death last night of Lucimarian Roberts. Mrs. Roberts died peacefully, surrounded by family members in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts was a remarkable woman whose wisdom, humor, faith, and spirit touched many people over the course of her long life. We at Upper Room Books feel incredibly blessed by the opportunity to get to know her through a writing and publishing project that brought her life story to the public. Participating in the launch of her book, MY STORY, MY SONG, certainly was a high point both professionally and personally for me, and I know many others would say the same.

I met Mrs. Roberts in person for the first time on the morning of the celebration tea and book launch at Oak Crest Mansion in Pass Christian this past April. (I wrote about that event on this blog). She sat in a chair getting her makeup done for a photo shoot, and as the makeup artist enhanced her lovely features, she chatted with him and with me. Her warm and easy manner immediately charmed us both, and her humble attitude about being the center of attention put everyone at ease. She was just looking forward to a fine day with family and friends.

Her remarks at the tea later in the day touched both the hearts and funny bones of all assembled to honor her. Mrs. Roberts had the gift of combining humor and profound life lessons. That afternoon Mrs. Roberts signed books for at least two hours, and the next day at the Gulfport Barnes & Noble, she refused to conclude an autograph session at the appointed time: she would not leave until she had greeted all 500 + people in the line. That was a glimpse of Mrs. Roberts’ hospitality, graciousness, and determination.

Writer Missy Buchanan, who collaborated with Mrs. Roberts on MY STORY, MY SONG, recalls, “One day we were trying to recall the lyrics to a specific hymn. She slid onto the piano bench and began to play. Before long, she was singing, then I was singing harmony with her. It was a holy moment.” Yes, around Lucimarian Roberts, holy moments were not uncommon.

Upper Room Books joins many others in celebrating the life and legacy of Lucimarian Roberts. Mrs. Roberts lived life fully to the end of her earthly days, always witnessing to God’s love. May the story she gave the world in MY STORY, MY SONG help that legacy to continue.

This is one of Mrs. Roberts’ favorite prayers:

The light of God surrounds me;
The love of God enfolds me;
The power of God protects me;
The presence of God watches over me;
Wherever I am, God is!

I invite you to visit this lovely written tribute by Good Morning America, where Mrs. Roberts’ daughter Robin is coanchor. Good Morning America also posted this video tribute.

If you knew Mrs. Roberts in person or through the pages of MY STORY, MY SONG, share your memories and tributes in our Comments section. Our prayers are with the Roberts family as they grieve the loss of Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts. May the peace of God be with them in the days ahead.

At a campground you speak with folks; share experiences, methods of doing things; tell stories around the campfire. The couple across the street brought us peach cobbler in honor of the wedding anniversary my husband and I were celebrating. A young man two sites down brought us his firewood as he was breaking camp. People gathered to talk about kayaks and canoes, and we all fed the cat. We often leave camp endeared to one another but with no exchange of names or information, believing we may meet up again.

Churches and small groups within churches can provide a sense of community. Members tell stories, eat together, care for one another. In these settings, we know one another’s names. What a gift!

What settings offer you a sense of community? Where do you go to meet with others who know you and your story?

Consider engaging in a small-group study like Companions in Christ, and check out Enuma Okoro’s reflections on community in Reluctant Pilgrim.

Rita Collett, Managing Editor

by Jeannie Crawford-Lee

The Tokens Show, an invention of Lee Camp, ethics and theology professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, is an amazing hybrid. I attended for the first time this summer—and it won’t be my last. Thanks to Upper Room Books staffer Craig Katzenmiller for introducing me to this unique experience. Sign me up for the next show at the fabled Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on November 18.

“Theology, Music, Books, Stories” is the tagline for Tokens, and sure enough, all those elements come together on stage in a Prairie-Home-Companion–style presentation that both entertains the senses and stimulates the intellect. The theme for the June show, “Tales of Reconciliation,” tied in with the Christian Scholars Conference taking place on the Lipscomb campus that week.

You really have to “be there” to believe that a conversation with Yale theologian Miroslov Volf totally works on the same program with a hilarious skit by “Brother Preacher” Greg Lee, rocking gospel music by Mike Farris, and soulful singing from Odessa Settles.

Check out this terrific write-up of the June show by Michael Brown, who blogs at Ocular Fusion http://www.ocularfusion.net/?p=8646

If you are in Nashville—or need an excuse to come to Music City this fall—plan to attend the November Tokens Show!

Grace. How ingeniously and fruitfully God employs the small things of daily life—a meal, a conversation, a glance—to place before us the great invitation to come, to be fully accepted and healed, and then to follow. To the tax collector and sinner in me, Jesus offers an approach without fear of rejection or recrimination: “It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick” (Matt. 9:12). And to the Pharisee in me, Jesus presents the great challenge of the spiritual life: “Go and learn the meaning of the words: ‘What I want is mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matt. 9:13).

Is it too great a stretch to suggest that this rhythm of approaching Jesus and then taking up his challenge is the heartbeat of a publishing ministry devoted to spiritual life resources? These resources too are among the small things of daily life. It seems to me that all our books on prayer, meditation, Bible study, and other spiritual disciplines offer pathways into a transforming encounter with Jesus. Some show us the way to his dwelling place (John 1:35-39) by offering guidance through what theologian Karl Barth called “the strange new world” of the Bible. Some present the wisdom of spiritual writers from across the ages or train the eyes of the heart to see the beauty of Christ shining in every corner of Creation. Other books encourage us to spend time in Christ’s presence simply watching how he is with people and learning first hand what it means that he is gentle and humble in heart (Matt. 11:29). Yet others help us cultivate the art of listening to him (Luke 9:35) through lectio divina practiced alone or in small groups. Some books on aspects of discipleship in light of contemporary issues may even lead us further by preparing our hearts to be the good soil which, receiving his words deeply, bears fruit a hundredfold (Mark 4:8).

Grace. How characteristic of God to make a personal story, a short phrase, a familiar metaphor on the page of a book suddenly come alive with consequences for our understanding and action. An unanticipated challenge to our vision of how things are, an undeniable claim upon our energies and resources, a profound reordering of our priorities, a new appreciation for the beauty of the Lord sends us out from the presence of Jesus with a new mandate: “Go and learn the meaning of my words by testing them in the daily activities and relationships of your life. And fear not, for I am with you always.”

Which spiritual life books have assisted you in this movement into Christ’s presence and out into the world?

John S. Mogabgab is the Special Projects Editor at Upper Room Books.

Craig Katzenmiller, aka Dusty, has been Permissions Assistant at Upper Room Books for the past year. He has eagerly taken on several additional tasks, such as contributing to the forthcoming A Guide to Prayer for All who Walk with God and posting to Facebook. Craig has an MTS from Lipscomb University and enjoys visiting prisoners on the weekends. He recently learned of his acceptance to a PhD program in Germany. We’ll miss him here at Upper Room Books but wish him all the best in his new adventure.

Glückwunsch! “Congratulations!”

There it was in an official letter from a German university. Glückwunsch! I got in. Faced with this written shout of congratulatory celebration, I felt anything but celebratory. Dozens of “what-ifs” ran through my mind. Anxiety. Worry. Fear. And I was only one word into the letter.

I knew that this “congratulations” was quite literally life changing. To accept this “congratulations” meant facing the daunting task of uprooting my rather comfortable life here in Nashville and traveling to the other side of the world. New setting. New language. New friends.

And that’s scary.

I like my current setting, my current language, and my current friends. The Upper Room, for example, is a wonderful place to work, and my co-workers here in the Book Department have become dear friends. This is just one of the many settings I am nervous to leave. Still, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So, with much fear and trembling, I have accepted the offer.

But fear and trembling is not the end of the story.

As in so many situations in our lives, that which is at first mired in fear can (often quickly) become settled in peace. Disquiet gives way to calm. Anxiety gives way to excitement. I have experienced this shift in the past weeks.

How has this happened?

I am convinced that it is only through the support of friends and loved-ones. My fear, I have since discerned, was primarily caused by the what-ifs that were running through my head. I didn’t want to leave people in a lurch; moreover, I didn’t want to abandon friends and family.

But I have been blessed by the excitement that others have expressed over my news about Germany. “You’ve gotta go!” has been the common refrain from many people. And their excitement has proven to be contagious. My initial fears have gone away and the anticipation I felt when I submitted by application has returned.

We must never underestimate the power of words. If I may tread dangerously close to cliché, words have the power to build up and the power to destroy. We never know how a single, simple sentence will affect those who hear it. My friends who simply said, “You’ve gotta go!” likely had no idea that they were instilling greatly-needed confidence back into me.

And so it is with the spiritual life. While silence and listening are indeed essential, speaking is also important in our pilgrimage together. With words we can express our deepest longings, and we can also offer advice, as well as correction, to friends who ask for help. We can speak in ways that either build firm foundations for the spiritual life or tear down all the solid spiritual ground on which we stand.

Knowing this, we should resolve to become more attuned to the words we use when we speak to others, making sure always to offer words of support to one another. Like my friends who offered a warm “You’ve gotta go!” to me about Germany, you too can offer words of encouragement to your friends. It might just give them the courage to take the next step in their spiritual lives. Our life together is a pilgrimage that never ends; it simply begins anew each day. Let’s help each other on our journey.

Anne and her dad at his home, December 2011.

As I mentioned in Part 1, for some time I have been agonizing about future plans for my elderly dad. Our discussions have been brief and leave me feeling unsettled. The last time I went to be with him during and after minor surgery, I had prepared myself to address the future head-on.

But somehow, after watching him sign the consent forms for surgery and sedation and being reminded that he shouldn’t make any major decisions that day, I just couldn’t in good conscience bring up the issue of “What do we do now?” Meaning, of course, what plans do we need to make to address the reality in which we find ourselves? As much as I wish, things will not just get better if we do nothing.

In my head I know that I “should” not worry. But my heart tells me otherwise.

I have prayed and asked God to help me discern the best course of action. I have talked to friends in similar situations. And of course, as I always do, I have sought out books for advice and information.

One book that has been especially helpful in this journey is A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents—And Ourselves by Jane Gross (Vintage Books, 2011). I was attracted to the book because Jane Gross is a New York Times journalist and an expert on elder care. She speaks from the experience of finding care for her 85-year-old mother, who was already in assisted living but suddenly was forced by a health crisis to seek alternative arrangements. Gross offers tips for working with siblings to find the best care options for elderly parents, dealing with the maze of Medicaid and Medicare, addressing financial concerns, understanding adult children’s needs and practicing self-care as we care for our parents, and much more.

As I’ve prayed, I have meditated on the following scriptures and readings:

Even before a word is on my tongue,
O LORD, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.”
—Psalm 139: 1-2, 4-5 (NRSV)

“Therefore, I [Jesus] say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. … Look at the birds in the sky. They don’t sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth much more than they are? Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? … Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
—Matthew 6:25-27, 34 (CEB)

“Gracious God, I thank you for the answered prayers in my life, especially …

_________________________________________. Quiet the noises in my soul and let me hear you. Be near to me in this journey. Amen.”
—Missy Buchanan, Aging Faithfully: 28 Days of Prayer

“Life is like a good book. There are countless times when we don’t have the foggiest understanding abut what’s happening. We puzzle over how the characters, the plot, themes, and episodes fit into the story. We read on, trusting that everything will make sense in the end. We believe somehow times of fear, bewilderment, and confusion will change to wonder, grace and revelation when we reach the concluding words. In the meantime, we read on. We simply show up, walk humbly with our God, and anticipate the next chapter of our life’s story.”
—Nell Noonan, Not Alone: Encouragement for Caregivers

In the meantime, I wait and pray for wisdom—sometimes not too patiently.

I also pray for those of you who provide daily care for a loved one and for those who work in senior care facilities. Your job is not easy.

I’ve had glimpses of what it takes to be a full-time caregiver. May God bless you in your caregiving journey.

May you find peace and strength, and may you feel the truth of Galatians 6:9 (CEB): “Let’s not get tired of doing good, because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up.”

Anne Trudel is associate marketing editor for The Upper Room. She was a project editor in Upper Room Books from 2001–2010 and is still passionate about Upper Room Books, just from a different perspective.

Recommended Reading

Missy Buchanan, Living with Purpose in a Worn-Out Body: Spiritual Encouragement for Older Adults (Upper Room Books, 2008). While this book is written primarily for elderly adults who are in physical or mental decline, it gives adult children understanding of the emotions and daily challenges their parents are experiencing.

Trevor Hudson, The Serenity Prayer: A Simple Prayer to Enrich Your Life (Upper Room Books, 2012). A good resource to help caregivers and others accept the situation they are in, relinquish their burdens to God, and find peace even in the midst of chaos.

Nell E. Noonan, Not Alone: Encouragement for Caregivers (Upper Room Books, 2009). Written by an author who was thrust into the situation of becoming caregiver for her husband, this book of 150 devotions is Bible-based, uplifting and yet realistic about the burdens of caregivers, plus it offers inspirational stories and prayers. I gave this book to a friend caring for her mother, who had Alzheimer’s; she reports that she read it over and over, underlining and highlighting portions of it, and this book got her through many a tough day.

Nell E. Noonan, The Struggles of Caregiving: 28 Days of Prayer (Upper Room Books, 2011). Another book by Noonan that helps caregivers cope with their frustration, questions about faith, guilt, and struggles to find balance.

“How easily we forget that God designed aging! … Once you truly acknowledge that aging is part of God’s plan, you can begin to embrace it as a divine gift.”

—Missy Buchanan, Aging Faithfully

I’m trying to view aging positively, but reality is hitting hard, breathing down my neck, whispering and sometimes shouting, “Your dad is in decline. It’s time to make some decisions now—before his physical decline becomes a full-blown crisis.”

You’ve probably heard the statistics. The fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population is over 85. According to a 2011 study, the number of Americans who provide care for their aging parents has tripled since 1994. Caregiving has become one of the major concerns of our time, with the number of senior baby boomers rising exponentially and the increased longevity of our elderly population.

How do we care for our elderly parents while treating them with dignity and allowing them to have a say in their future?

Anne and her dad in The Upper Room's Agape Garden, summer 2009.

How do we step in when necessary and make tough decisions, becoming almost like parents to our own parents?

How do we manage this transition without losing our sanity?

I’ve been pondering these questions for some time as I think about my 90-year-old dad. Alas, I cannot come up with any simple solutions.

My dad is married, lives 5 hours away from me, and has a wife who suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. My stepmother is 94.

As an only child, I feel responsible for my dad’s well-being and long to be closer to him so I can check on him more often. He clings to his independence quite fiercely, still driving and only recently having acquiesced to using a cane. He lives alone in his home.

Over the past decade, we’ve had many conversations about his future. At one point he was ready to move to Nashville so he could be closer to me. But he feels the pull of honoring his marriage vows.

We’ve had several health scares since Dad had quadruple bypass surgery 10 years ago. Each time he’s had surgery, I have taken time off work and traveled to North Carolina to be with him during his hospitalization and to help for a few days afterward. The last time he had general anesthesia, things did not go well, and I had to make temporary arrangements for home health care.

I am blessed and grateful that my stepsister, who lives next door to Daddy, checks in on him daily. Though she has willingly dressed wounds when I’ve had to resume my normal life in Nashville, I realize this is becoming a heavy burden for her.

I have dealt with this increasingly stressful (and guilt-inducing) situation by worrying about it constantly or psychologically distancing myself, neither of which has been a helpful coping mechanism or altered the reality we face.

So many questions plague me. Do I move Daddy to Nashville, and if so, how do I do this without strong-arming him? Does he need to move to assisted living in the facility where my stepmother resides? Would providing in-home care be a better alternative?

I wonder how many of you reading this blog are dealing with similar issues with your parents. What advice have you found helpful? What have you learned from your experiences? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

Anne Trudel is associate marketing editor for The Upper Room. She was a project editor in Upper Room Books from 2001–2010 and is still passionate about Upper Room Books, just from a different perspective.

(The rest of this article will be continued in Part 2, which will be posted on Thursday, July 26.)

Bishop Carter is the author of Pray for Me: The Power in Praying for Others, published by the Upper Room.

One evening not long ago, I saw a man crossing the street. He was the kind of person who would go unnoticed were he not passing in front of your car at a stoplight. He was plain, ordinary. And I thought to myself, There goes a real person, an ordinary person.

Strange, these moments we learn things about ourselves, moments that seem to come from somewhere beyond the mind’s intuitive reach; moments that have no immediate bearing upon or relation to the context in which they announce themselves; moments that are plain and clear, simple and profound.

I speak here to my own generation, the generation of “twenty-somethings.” Most of us are afraid to admit we are ordinary and do everything within our power to fool the world into thinking we are not—with clothes, cars, condominiums, surgery, and education. We are the children and grandchildren of two generations of people who worked hard to give us what we have today. We are the children and grandchildren of people who saved every penny, were confident and secure in being ordinary people living ordinary lives. They accepted that they were ordinary and did not fight against it as we do. They did not try to be people they weren’t.

The spirit of our generation is one of our extraordinariness. Indeed, we are extraordinary, but not in the way so many of us believe. We are convinced that each of us is unique, somehow different. This is not bad in and of itself because we are indeed each of us unique. It becomes a danger when it leads to self-delusion, when we think it tames and diminishes the difficulties of life, the things with which we would rather not deal—the difficulty of limited means, of not having everything we desire or accomplishing everything we dream; of loss, relationships failed, not having the best job, making the most money, or being the smartest. The false sense of our extraordinariness has found its way into our actions and the way we live our lives. We act like millionaires and movie stars. We believe our iPhones and fancy clothes will reveal to the world that we are people of status and respect (when really we just end up looking like everybody else and all our efforts go unnoticed because we blend in so well with the rest of a dissatisfied and material generation, and we become jesters in our own court). We treat our educations, possessions, opportunities, and good luck with an air of entitlement, as if some great cosmic benefactor, indifferent to the rest of the universe, was entirely preoccupied with smiling happily upon our individual favor and ours alone. We have come to believe that we are the exception to every rule, that nothing can impede our heart’s desires!

Where does this lead us? We fail to recognize our ordinariness: that we are no different than a million others who have gone before us and that we would be happier if we would stop trying to be anything other than who we are.

Recognizing that we are ordinary is not resignation. It is not giving up, or losing the fight. It is not raising a white flag in the midst of an economy in rubble, a society in unrest, and a world in turmoil. It is not resigning our disappointed spirits to a malevolent universe that, once having assured us of our success, has failed to keep its promise.

On the contrary, recognizing that we are ordinary is a triumphant posture, a holy posture, the proclamation of a benevolent universe where being ordinary is not only okay, but is right and good. It is not giving up on your dreams, but assigning to them their proper place, knowing that a dream unfulfilled or not yet fulfilled is not a sign of failure but of being human. And to be human is never wrong.

So let us all be ordinary, and let us be okay with being ordinary! Let us learn familiarity with and fulfillment in the quotidian and the typical. Let us love our teeth, which are not perfectly white or straight; our mediocre (or not even mediocre) bodies; and our receding hairlines. Let us embrace days that are quiet and uneventful.

Let us make known our doubts about our intellectual acumen, our physical design, and our overall marketability in a culture where good looks are the capital and insecurities the currency. Let us display them in the open air, that we may be honest about our fears and, at the same time, disarm them. For we only bow before the programs and mandates of a self-conscious culture when we refuse to acknowledge its tyranny on our lives. Let us all be glamorously humdrum, fabulously normal, and beautifully common.

Let us not think we must save the world: let us honestly admit that we have not been given this charge nor could we keep it if we had. Let us live quiet lives but good lives. Let us be conquerors of the mundane and experts of the average. Let us be real people. And let us not be ashamed.

Above all, let us not confuse ordinariness with failure, or (worse) with mediocrity, or (worse yet) with chronic inferiority (to what, who knows?). But let us be sure to equate ordinariness with a self-knowing, a clarity about things, and the courage to stand in the space between life as we dream it and life as it is.

every matter under heaven.

—Ecclesiastes 3:1

 Conversation became more animated as my wife and I neared the movie theater. From all we had read and heard, the film we were about to see would be memorable. The Artist is an intriguing throwback to an early twentieth-century genre of moviemaking associated with Buster Keaton and Mary Pickford. Would we really be able to sustain attention and interest in a contemporary reprise of such a passé form of entertainment?

The Artist follows the fortunes of silent movie star George Valentin as he struggles to navigate the transition to talking movies. The film is deftly crafted, with a sure-footed narrative line strengthened by restrained use of pathos and humor. The question of whether the film would gain and hold our interest evaporated minutes into the viewing. We were not surprised when The Artist later won five Oscars.

At a critical point in the story, studio executives invite Valentin to join them in watching a new talking movie. It is an obvious attempt to win the silent screen idol over to what the executives believe is the coming era in the film industry. Not long into the showing, Valentin leaps up and storms out of the room declaring emphatically, “That’s not a movie!”

That scene, that phrase, and their larger context were unsettling in their familiarity. As someone whose working life has been occupied with editing magazines and books, it was impossible for me to watch Valentin’s story without recalling technologically and culturally driven changes now facing the world of print publishing. How often have I heard others say, and even said silently to myself, “An e-book isn’t a book!”

In our better moments, we acknowledge that books have not always existed in their current form. The widely available print book is a breed whose pedigree can be traced to the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Yet for many of us, print books and culture seem eternally united. Books have been trustworthy companions waiting patiently on personal or community library shelves to offer us a word of encouragement, wisdom, or technical know-how. And, like any good friend, they are pleasant to be with. To feel the heft of a substantial volume in your hand, to smell the beckoning hint of unfamiliar mindscapes emitted by its pages, to notice with quiet contentment the subtle design decisions concerning typography, page layout, paper texture and opacity that enhance the content—all this and more confirms the conviction that words splayed across an e-reader screen cannot represent a real book. Instead, they are simply part of a content aggregation.

Really? Perhaps the new forms books will assume as a result of the digital revolution will have their own distinctive charms. I think of a coworker who not ten years ago typically travelled to events he was leading with an extra suitcase impossibly heavy with books he might want to consult. As more and more titles appear in digital formats, he will be able to make similar trips with a virtual library in his briefcase. Or consider the many enrichments an enhanced e-book might offer the spiritual seeker—embedded audio clips of sacred music or video segments of renowned teachers speaking about the subject of the chapter (if there are still chapters), links to a vast spectrum of graphics or supplementary literary sources that enlarge on the theme of the paragraph (if there are still paragraphs), perhaps even a holographic evening with the author describing why he or she was moved to write this book (if, with the phenomenon of crowd-sourcing, there is still an author).

Recently my editorial colleagues have been discussing the possibility of releasing digital books serially. With the technology available to us, we could publish one chapter of a book every week or two on a whole variety of e-platforms. Actually, it is an old idea. Historian Robert Darnton notes how in the mid-1600s publishers began to break up book-length texts into shorter bites. “The new typographical structure implied a new kind of reading and a new public: humble people, who lacked the facility and the time to take in lengthy stretches of narrative.”[1] Does this description bear a resemblance to that of some contemporary readers living fast-paced lives whose attention span has been influenced by immersion in the Internet and other digital environments?[2] If so, then perhaps the transition to a new kind of book will allow publishers to provide a new reading public with resources that appropriately meet its needs and interests.

For everything there is a season. What do you think?

John S. Mogabgab

Special Projects Editor

See Jan’s feature on the UMC.org homepage.  Check out Jan’s blog here.

http://bit.ly/N1DEcD

All of us at Upper Room Books extend sympathy to his wife, Verna, and the entire family.

You can watch Robin and her mother on The View this Friday, May 18, on ABC.

Check out behind-the-scenes footage from her photo shoot!

Robin Roberts, Missy Buchanan, Beth Buchanan at GMA taping.

Upper Room staffers gathered this morning to watch TV. No, we are not slackers. Our new release MY STORY, MY SONG was featured on Good Morning America with Robin Roberts today. Seated and taking in caffeine, we waited excitedly for the moment when the segment would start. Then….can you believe this? The audio went out…then the picture. Then came the dreaded on-screen message from the local ABC affiliate: We apologize for TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.

NO!!!!

We figured there was time before the segment, but folks were calling friends and family in other states to get word on the programming. After at least 15 minutes—return of audio and picture. Yay! When the segment started, all were treated to a beautiful montage of film, still photos, and audio about the life of Lucimarian Roberts as Robin Roberts narrated. It was a moving tribute to her mom on the eve of Mother’s Day. Next came a terrific interview with Missy Buchanan who wrote the book with Mrs. Roberts. The GMA cast were standing outside with the usual throng of onlookers on a beautiful day in NYC. Missy shared her story of getting to know Mrs. Roberts and her honor in listening and recording her life story.

Here’s link to the segment 

Missy urged listeners to ask for—and listen to—the stories of older family and friends. They are precious and hold much wisdom. I could see folks in the background nodding. This Mother’s Day, ask for some stories. You’ll be glad you did.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Editorial Director

You can watch Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts, Lucimarian Roberts and Missy Buchanan in interviews promoting My Story, My Song this week. The response to this book has been astounding so far, and we revel in how many lives this memoir has already touched. Remember to get a copy for yourself and your mother, just in time for Mother’s Day!

Media Dates:

Good Morning America

Thursday, May 10

The View

Friday, May 11

Take a look at Robin’s interview with Tavis Smiley last week!

See more from Tavis Smiley.

For more information about My Story, My Song, visit the Upper Room bookstore here.

Robin and Lucimarian Roberts

It was a great opportunity for some 250 family members and friends to congratulate her and take home autographed copies of the new book. The day was gorgeous, and Oak Crest Mansion, site of the event, a delightfully elegant Southern setting. Guests, seated at round tables decorated with bouquets of hydrangeas, selected a tea of their choice and filled their plates with finger sandwiches and yummy sweets.

Missy Buchanan, Lucimarian Roberts, Robin Roberts with Upper Room Staff at Oak Crest Mansion.

The program opened with a prayer by Sarah Wilke, publisher of The Upper Room. Daughters Robin Roberts and Sally-Ann Roberts Nabonne spoke eloquently about their mother, and daughter Dorothy Roberts McEwen sang “This Is My Story, This Is My Song.”

Missy Buchanan told the story of getting to know Mrs. Roberts and their collaboration on the book, which tells a remarkable story of faith and family. When Lucimarian Roberts came to the podium, she charmed the attendees with her humor and her insight. A standing ovation affirmed the love and respect she inspires. Following the tea, people lined up to have their books autographed and to greet Mrs. Roberts and her family.

Missy Buchanan, Mrs. Roberts, and Robin surrounded by Missy's daughters and friends.

It was a pleasure and an honor to be part of such a joyful occasion!

Jeannie Crawford-Lee
Editorial Director, Upper Room Books

The full interview with News 8 Daybreak’s Ron Corning and Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts on her mother Lucimarian Roberts’ memoir “My Story, My Song,” in which Roberts shares reflections at each chapter. Missy Buchanon wrote the book with the mother and daughter.

We look forward to being in conversation with readers, writers, and anyone just curious about what’s going on here. Christian community, prayer, and spiritual practice are our reasons for being. Upper Room Books is one of the ministries of The Upper Room, which started with a little devotional magazine published in the 1930s and has grown into a global prayer movement.

Let’s get to know each other.

Peace,

Jeannie Crawford-Lee

Editorial Director, Upper Room Books

Numerical growth and institutional maintenance have captured the thinking of many who write about the vital signs of effective congregations. I must admit that when I was serving as a pastor and as a bishop I was caught up in the same swirl of understanding. I am now feeling that there should be a different standard of measurement for meaningful congregational life.

Instead of numerical growth and stabilizing the institution, we need to put strong determined effort into a deeper set of measurements such as growth in compassion, forgiveness, mercy, kindness and justice. These are the benchmarks that bear kingdom fruit. It is possible for a congregation to experience financial and numerical strength and not grow in the fruits of the spirit.

I recently served as interim pastor of a congregation.  As I was leaving the office one day to make hospital calls, I met a lady on the parking lot of the church whom I did not know. After a rather casual greeting, she pointed to the church building and said, “Is there someone in there who can teach me how to pray?”

I was stumped by her question. She was pointing to a full service megachurch that offers day care, a weekday school, athletic leagues, mission trips, social services, worship, choirs, a vibrant youth ministry and Sunday school for all ages. At a deeper level, she was inquiring about learning how to practice the spiritual disciplines. I had no answer to her question. I gave her my card and requested that she give me a call so that we could have conversation. She never called and I never saw her again.

When I got back to my office I looked at the calendar of activities for the week and not one had anything to do with learning, experiencing or keeping the spiritual disciplines. How can believers grow in the fruits of the spirit if spiritual practice is neglected?

Since 1996 I have preached in over 400 congregations. In each of these I have looked at the “opportunities for the week” that are listed on the worship sheet. It has been rare for me to see any emphasis on how to pray, how to search the Scriptures, how to do spiritual reading, or how to practice deeds of mercy and kindness. Yet these are the disciplines that strengthen the inner life. These help us to be formed into a living, loving relationship with God.

If we pay attention to spiritual practices we will be more able to get in touch with the gifts of a particular congregation. I hold to the belief that God has gifted every congregation. It is not necessary to search frantically for new gifts. We, as pastors and lay leaders, need to build on the gifts that are already present in the congregation. Not all congregations are gifted in the same way but all are gifted in some way. Wise leaders find ways to maximize the spiritual gifts that are already in the hearts of the people. This has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the size or location of a congregation.

United Methodist people are searching for a meaningful relationship to the sacred, one that allows us to remain working, playing and loving a path that enables us to experience the holy in the kitchen, in nature, in art and in others. There is a gnawing hunger for doors to be opened to deeper levels of meaning and living. The church needs more and more congregations which truly believe that the inner life is more important than numerical and financial growth.

So, if we are focused on spiritual practices what would be the return? It would evoke harmony and genuine love toward the people around us, our families, spiritual associates, the poor and the marginalized. For others the return might be doing deeds of mercy and kindness in the community. For some it would result in a deepening of one’s commitment to meditation, prayer, cultivation of virtue and a more regular association with some who have the same desire.

I cannot prove it but I am of the opinion that congregations that focus on growing in compassion, forgiveness, mercy, kindness and justice have a stronger and more authentic commitment to social witness than those that are not so concerned. Such congregations are better able to organize themselves around the pain that is in the community where they happen to be located. Mr. Wesley taught us that real social concern grows out of vital piety. It is the latter that is missing from the church at all levels.

I am now 72 years old and I have been a pastor since 1959. As I look back over my years as a pastor I find myself wishing that I had organized my congregations around worship, searching the Scriptures, more Holy Communion, deeds of mercy and kindness, prayer, meditation and Christian fellowship. I now see that these are the most important means of Grace.

Reverend Pennel is a former United Methodist Bishop (retired) and currently serves as Professor of the Practice of Leadership at Vanderbilt Divinity School.

This article has appeared in both the Georgia Advocate and the Virginia Advocate, and is reprinted with permission of the author.

Several years ago, I answered the telephone and heard a sweet voice ask if I was Missy Buchanan, the author of Living with Purpose in a Worn-Out Body. The older woman introduced herself as Lucimarian Roberts. We chatted for a moment before she posed an intriguing question: How had I known what she was thinking when I wrote the book? Lucimarian said that my words had given voice to her private thoughts.

We talked like old friends that afternoon, and over the next year or so, we shared other phone conversations and encouraging notes. When I was asked to tape a segment for Good Morning America with Lucimarian and her daughter Robin, co-anchor of the show, we finally met in person. It didn’t take long to discover the refreshingly authentic warmth and humility of both Roberts women.

Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to work alongside Lucimarian on this book about the most meaningful stories of her life. She graciously invited me to sit with her in the living room of her Mississippi home to ask questions and listen for hours at a stretch. I learned intriguing details about her childhood and the people who encouraged her to dream bigger dreams. I heard stories of racism and perseverance. I felt her deep sense of loss as she shared stories of her father’s alcoholism, her husband’s unexpected death, and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As we reminisced over vintage photographs, I remember thinking that her family and friends had become very real to me.

For this book, Lucimarian has opened her heart as wide as the Texas sky. Together we have laughed and shared gumbo and Key lime pie. Even so, no question has gone unanswered. I am privileged to share the stories of 88-year-old Lucimarian Roberts as she looks back across time to see the hand of God at work in her life.

Missy Buchanan is the co-author of My Story, My Song.

I just returned from the annual Ministers’ Mates Retreat, a weekend away in a lovely nature setting. The spouses of pastors of my local area gather, leaving mates, children, household responsibilities, and church commitments behind. We gather to renew our bodies and spirits and to enjoy fellowship with persons in like situations.  We are seeing a decrease in the number of attendees and realize the change in pastoral settings: more pastoral families have two partners working outside the home. Our parental desire to ensure that our children are exposed to all future possibilities with regard to sports, music, and the arts may leave parents totally frazzled racing to appointments with children—too frazzled even to commit to time away for their own health and perspective.

This year the group looked at the neuroplasticity of the brain, our bodies’ ability to generate neurons and to clear out the electrical system in places where we get stuck. We learned that our frontal cortex, which has developed over the past 15,000 years can grow, better enabling compassionate responses to our innate response for fight or flight. And what was a primary “activity” for this development? Meditation. Not simply being still and quiet, but intentionally choosing to place oneself in God’s presence, actively focusing on God. Twenty minutes is an optimum timeframe.

I left the retreat acknowledging my need for such a practice. I am held in a community of care that calls me to accountability. I want to lead a less frantic life.

To learn more about more contemplative practices, we recommend these books from the Upper Room:

Creating a Life with God: The Call of Ancient Prayer Practices by Daniel Wolpert

Sacred Breath: Forty Days of Centering Prayer by J. David Muyskens

Fr. Jones:

Our church spirit study group is reading The Upper Room Disciplines this year and we just completed last week’s readings.

One of our members asked about the meaning of your prayer on page 60, for 2/17/2012, which reads, “Lord, let me be empty that you may be full.”

I wonder if you would be so generous as to elaborate on your use of the phrase, “that you may be full”? We assumed you meant God by the word “you,” so we were curious as to how our being empty would fill God. We are familiar with the idea of needing to be emptied that we may be full; but not the idea of God being full (or filled) in this way.

Sincerely,

Ray.

Dear Raymond,

What a delight to hear from one of the “invisible audience” for whom an author writes; I always wonder if anyone out there really reads what I write.

Now about your question having to do with my prayer, “Lord, let me be empty that you may be full,” a thought that is less common than the idea of our being emptied in order for us to be filled. And I was definitely suggesting that this filling, in turn, be offered to God.

Some other thoughts and images that this evokes:

A passage from John Wesley’s Watch Night commitment, which he proposed for all Methodists, captures something of this idea. “I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will, put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you, laid aside for you, exalted to you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.”

Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits) said a similar thing: “Take Lord, receive, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given it to me, and now I give it back to you. All is yours now, dispose of it according to your will, give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.”

Another related image would be when Jesus, when he describes giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty as “doing it to me.” A fine image of us feeding God.

I think also of the idea of a child giving a valentine to her mother, saying “I love you.” So us with God. While God may not need our gifts, I want to believe that God is delighted, that it adds to the emotional life of God, as it were—that God cares.

All of this can be summed up with Paul’s image of God “becoming All in all.” We are cocreators with God, and God takes up into himself that which can be redeemed and made a permanent part of God’s memory, reflected back through God’s imagination to us as the possibilities of our future, to be returned to God as increase.

Raymond, hopefully some of these quick reflections will be helpful. Thank you for asking.

W. Paul Jones

Author, professor, activist; monk, Hermitage Spiritual Retreat Center; Lake Pomme de Terre, Missouri

Change comes to us all whether we like it or not. New things are happening to me and around me. They are happening to me all at once and without my permission. My life, shaped and patterned by seven years of being a student, will soon dissolve into something different, and while the possibility of what this something different might be is exciting, any excitement is trumped by fear, a fear so intense that at times it paralyzes my mind and makes frail my spirit. My old routines and habits, my old way of doing things, the way in which I have lived each day for the last seven years is being advanced upon by an army of a thousand tiny transitions and changes, and all I can do is stand unarmed in an open field and wait for it to come, bracing myself for the impact. There are moments in my day when I know not what to do with myself. I am unable to discern the direction in which I am headed. Nor do I know in what direction I need to be headed, or what awaits me on the other side of the divide that separates life in the present from life in the future, the very near future.

I think I am beginning to understand what poet Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he spoke of an “unfamiliar presence” that enters us, those periods in life when “everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away”, those times when “we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.”[1] The ground beneath my feet is shifting. I feel it pulling out from under me, and I can feel it in my bones, as if they understand what is coming before the rest of me does, as if the anxiety and fear over what the future may bring— its imminence, its inevitability— has been with me longer than I have known. And I stand in a place where I can no longer remain standing.

For me, relief comes only when I am able to speak my mind, when I open myself to others and say to the world what I am feeling, that during this time of transition from the familiar to the wholly unfamiliar I am lonely and scared.

What if it is in these moments that we are most human? Suppose it is when we say to the world with sincerity and honesty that we are weak, vulnerable, and tired that we are our most authentic selves, that it is in these moments that God is closer to us than we realize, that God is deep inside us, working something new within us, pushing us in a different direction.  Suppose it is during our sadness, loneliness, anxiety, and fear that we experience God’s deepest call for our lives. Suppose it is in our moments of tension and anxiety, worry and burden, heavy hearts and weary minds that God is making for us a new foundation upon which to stand.

When we are honest about the way the way we feel and what we are experiencing we honor everything inside us that is true and authentic. When we say to the world we are vulnerable or in pain, that we are worried about what the future may bring, that we fear the demands the days ahead may place upon our bodies and spirits, we honor everything within us that is human. And as these moments remind us, we are very human. Only when we are shocked into the realization of our humanness, when our astonished emotions cry out in confusion, may we then know that we have not been forgotten, that the God who created us, the God that made us human, is closer than ever. For there, in the middle of our pain and worry, tension and frustration, sadness and loneliness, all that makes us human, is a God stirring deep inside us, still creating, still attentive, still loving; a God that, though we sometimes give up on ourselves, has not given up on us.

A friend once told me, “Paul, you were our Facebook before there was a Facebook!” He meant that I like to keep in touch with people. I seek ways to keep friendships preserved and to stay in touch. I don’t keep up with people as much as I’d like, but in comparison to my friend’s other acquaintances, apparently I do. Writing letters used to be a joy, but today email and Facebook are the primary ways I check on friends.

I never had a MySpace page, and I’m not on Linkedin, but I love the way Facebook brings people together. I reconnected with a high school friend, whom I hadn’t talked to for over thirty years. Shorty afterward his mother died, and so his other far-flung acquaintances and I gave him prayers and consolation. Without the power of contemporary social media, it’s hard to see how we could’ve supported him better. Participants in other online communities, like the Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, testify to the caring they receive from people (whom they never meet) around the country and the world!

If you think about it, the majority of the New Testament literature is social networking! Verity Jones, writing in the Yale Divinity School alumni journal Reflections (Fall-Winter 2011), notes that Paul made connections among friends, disciples, and congregations around the Empire. Early Christian congregations had not only face-to-face communication but also “links” around the empire in a “web” of support, teaching, requests for help, and so on.

Today, the Internet creates community and provides for the fast spread of information. Email is an effective tool for churches’ prayer chains, perhaps more so than the telephone. I remember discussions in my parishes about the cost of Yellow Page ads and what we could afford, so that visitors would find us readily. Today, many churches have their own websites, providing schedules of events, information, sermons, and newsletters.

Effective as social media is, we would be lonely if our only religious activity was online. The fellowship of Sunday school classes and Vacation Bible Schools would likely be lost if these programs were conducted like online courses. Sites such as The Virtual Abbey, which conduct worship services on Twitter, offer interaction and fellowship, but of course, important activities and rites like the sacraments must happen with other people in the same physical room.

The benefit of online community is real-time support among people who are geographically scattered. For instance, if you share your troubles on Facebook, people who might otherwise never know your problem can express their concern when you need it most. Those of us who’ve received outpourings of friendship appreciate the power of instant, online communication.

Paul E. Stroble is an elder in The United Methodist Church, has served as parish pastor and college instructor, and currently teaches at Webster University in St. Louis. He is the author of 11 books, including You Gave Me a Wide Place: Holy Places of Our Lives (published by Upper Room Books).

Not many persons who read books have an idea about the book process schedule. For those of you who daily open The Upper Disciplines 2012 for your devotional time, you may find it a shocking to know that the 2013 edition is about to head to the printer!

Upper Room Disciplines is a peculiar “animal” in that marketing wants the actual volume available in June of the prior year in order to get the book into book shows where it can strut its stuff. This leads to a March release to the printer of the upcoming year’s volume just shortly after the current year has been delivered to readers for their devotional pleasure. In the same timeframe of early in the current year, the editorial team is issuing invitations to writers for the 2014 volume! You can imagine that this takes a lot of coordination and follow-up!

Consider the main features of the devotional volume itself:

• 53 writers from around the globe generate
• 365 meditations and
• 365 prayers or thoughts for reflection as well as
• 212 prompts for personal and small-group use.

The writers are both lay and clergy representing many denominations and traditions. In the 2013 edition, a recovery group from California reflects collectively on scripture and their experience of living out of God’s love. Professors, teachers, counselors, churchgoers bring their thoughts and lives to the table as each provides a week of meditations on scripture. What diversity, breadth, and depth of perspective they provide.

This week, the 2013 edition of The Upper Room Disciplines will find its way upstairs to the production department. The production team members will identify a printer, the digital files will whisk off electronically. Proofs will come for cover and print and in the next five weeks, the bound volumes will drop into the arms of a three-slice blade and drop into their cartons for shipping. I marvel at the process; I marvel at the finished product that touches thousands of lives.

The Upper Room: inspiring devotion, creating community.

Rita Collett is a member of the books editorial team

This past Christmas, I received the most touching gift I’ve ever received. The gift, a leather bound Bible, was given to me by a small group of inmates from the state prison in Nashville. In my experience, there is usually nothing especially moving about being given a Bible once one is past the age of ten; but this Bible was different because it was a gift given out of extreme poverty. These six prisoners, men with whom I translate the Greek New Testament, have full-time jobs in the prison but often barely earn enough to pay for life’s necessities—toiletries, medical care, snack food, etc. Yet, in the midst of their poverty, they pooled their spare change and bought me a beautiful, blue, leather Bible. A colleague here at The Upper Room likened this loving gesture to the widow in Mark 12, and I think that comparison is appropriate. And now, as we journey towards Easter, both the gesture of the men at the prison and the offering of the widow in Mark 12 can be models for our practice of almsgiving in this season of Lent.

Historically, the church has affirmed three types of practices to prepare us for Easter’s new creation: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Fasting and prayer get most of the attention from the church at-large, but almsgiving is an essential part of Lent because it forces us to involve ourselves in our communities economically. Moreover, almsgiving allows us the opportunity to detach from our desire for more wealth, showing that we desire to serve God and not Mammon. As a Lenten practice, giving our money to others should be a reflection of the love Jesus displayed on Good Friday. That means, almsgiving can never be an exercise of self-promotion; it must be done quietly. Jesus, in fact, commanded such secrecy in the Sermon on the Mount, saying that when we give to the poor, we should not even let one hand know what the other hand is doing (Matt 6:1-4). That necessarily means we cannot desire recognition for the funds we distribute during Lent. Instead, like the men who gave me the Bible and the widow of Mark 12, we take pleasure in the simple act of giving, while we also give of ourselves so that others might benefit. Again, this mirrors the story of Good Friday, of Jesus who gave his entire being so that others might have life. Only through learning to give the entirety of our being for the good of “Others”—prisoners, widows, orphans, immigrants—can we truly live into the story of Easter.

How then can we practice growing toward self-emptying love during this season of Lent though almsgiving? One option—the traditional fasting-giving option—is to abstain from something that you regularly spend money on (for example, coffee). As Lent comes and goes, pay attention to how much money you have saved by not buying that caramel macchiato every day and give that money to a local charity with whom you can continue to be involved even after Lent concludes. Other options may be more subtle: double your tips when you eat out or get a haircut; buy a copy of your local street newspaper every chance you get, making sure to give extra money as an offering for your vendor; and/or donate your time as well as food to a local homeless ministry like the Room In The Inn. This sort of thoughtful giving of our helps us learn to love one another as our Lord has loved us in this time of preparation called Lent.

I first became aware of my love for words when I removed a dusty copy of Jack London’s Sea Wolf from its spot on the shelf in my grandmother’s guest bedroom. I opened the book and began to read, scanning the lines of antique type. Little of what I read could I understand. On the pages were large words I did not recognize, and London’s sentences were far too complex for my young mind. If the meaning of London’s words eluded me their physical quality fascinated me. I was mesmerized by the intermingling of the words on the pages before me. Although my vocabulary and grammatical skill were too limited to decipher their meaning, I discovered myself absorbed by and in awe of the new world before me, as if I had stumbled upon a well-kept secret, a lost empire yet to be explored, one whose geography was vast and whose territory confined only to the nearly illimitable boundaries of the intellect. I had discovered a world where paragraphs, like landmasses of various sizes and shapes, float in a white sea of margin and indentation; where the explorer’s progress is marked by the turning of a page and an old idea located in new language arrests the reader’s attention like a red flag in the wilderness of the imagination and intellect.

My love of words has pushed me in the direction of publishing and editing. Words are the business of editors, and they are the reason I like the business. And for me, the business is, decidedly, a spiritual one.

The relationship between author, editor, and reader is one of profound vulnerability. When an author submits a text to an editor, the author has handed over a sacred object, one that has been countless hours in the construction and into which the author has poured immeasurable amounts of his or her mind, body, and spirit. The author and everything he or she has put into a text becomes vulnerable to the suggestions, revisions, and deletions of the astute and discriminating editor. The author must trust the editor to do his or her job forthrightly, honestly, and in full awareness of personal biases and areas of intellectual and creative weakness. Similarly, the editor must trust the author to have produced a text that is similarly aware, forthright, and honest, and is vulnerable to the author in that the editor relies on the author to produce something with which he or she can work and employ his or her intellectual and creative skills to their fullest. Manuscript in hand, the editor holds an object as precious as a newborn baby, and the posture he or she assumes is that of midwife, responsible for the nurture and health of the ideas to which an author has given birth.

For followers of Christ, words are of particular significance. It is with words that we tell who we are and what we are about. It is through language that we experience a most intimate connection to Jesus, the apostles, and the early Christian community. It was by words that creation was spoken into existence, and it was The Word made flesh that entered creation and human history. It was through language that the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel spoke to Israel. And it was through language that God spoke to Moses and Moses to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of slavery.

Like God’s words to Moses, words have the power to confront injustice and articulate methods of relief. They have the power to deliver communities from slavery and oppression, exclusion and hate. Words have the power to change us and make us think. They inspire us and they bring us pause. They alter our perceptions and speak into existence that which did not exist prior. Like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, words can call us away from what we have become and back to what we should be. But most importantly, words endure; they are resilient and resist the eroding effects of time and change. Long after my copy of London’s Sea Wolf has fallen apart and its pages have been rendered unreadable by the yellowing of acid treated paper, the words shall remain imprinted upon my mind, capturing and holding my attention as if I were seeing them for the first time.

UPDATE:
Sign up for our online Lent retreat! You can join author Derek Maul and online learners from around the world as we experience Lenten practices together. The retreat starts February 22, Ash Wednesday, and runs until April 8, Easter Sunday. Click here to register!

Blogging on a daily basis is really quite easy—there’s a kind of natural rhythm that develops over time. But planting a “one-off” post on my publisher’s page, well, that’s not so straightforward.

However—and this is invariably the case when writing with an open heart—the challenge of putting pen to paper and the dynamics of the struggle to produce exceptional work turn out to be exactly where this conversation needs to begin.

Derek Maul in Israel last month, in search of good material for his blog...

Author Malcolm Gladwell (“Outliers”) points out the undeniable correlation between exceptional performance and faithful practice. Not just practice, it turns out, but 15,000 hours of it. He cited several case studies of successful performers in business, sports, and innovation.

Other than natural giftedness, the best predictor of exceptional achievement is dogged, day-in day-out, repetition and cumulative rehearsal. Giftedness without practice, Gladwell points out, is simply not enough.

My latest Upper Room Books publication, Reaching Toward Easter, makes a similar observation when it comes to what I call the “Life-Charged” life of faith. There is no substitute for a day-by-day walk with God and there are no shortcuts that can bypass the essential imperative for time spent in the presence of Jesus.

CHALLENGE:

A couple of years ago I challenged myself to observe Lent via the discipline of daily devotion, with the caveat that the experience had to be 100% homegrown. Consequently, I wrote my way from Ash Wednesday to Easter, jotting down what God was showing me as I opened the Word at the beginning of each day.

The result was— primarily— a rich walk with God and a deepening of my commitment to be a more deliberate Follower of The Way of Jesus. The spin-off was an outline for a Lenten devotional book that captured the attention of my editors because it was already alive and kicking.

SPIRITUAL LIFE:

Just as my blog flows more naturally from a daily routine, and exceptional people perform at capacity because they’ve logged 15,000-plus hours of practice, so the experience of growing in Christ benefits from the simple discipline of repetition.

I’d like to challenge you to do two things:

First, read Reaching Toward Easter, and read it the way it was written – one day at a time. Invite the Spirit of God into your experience of Lent and then witness yourself begin to take significant strides toward an “exceptional” walk of faith.

Additionally, make the commitment to write – reflectively – about each day’s experience of grace. When you are through you will be 49 days into a spiritual experience that may well become your first – or your next – book.

“Outliers for Jesus”… I like it already!

In the promise and the hope of an Easter faith worth (at least) 49 more days of deliberate reflection –

DEREK

Derek Maul blogs, daily, at www.derekmaul.wordpress.com. Derek writes for a variety of magazines, newspapers and online venues. His work has been featured in several national publications, including Guideposts, Newsweek, USA Today and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Derek divides his time between writing and traveling to speak about the fully engaged Christian life. He lives near Tampa, Florida, with his wife, Rebekah.

One of my fresh starts relates to handling the work of my office. I’m one of those people who need to see stuff—read “piles”—or I forget about things (out of sight = could slip my mind). But leaving everything out gets so messy and looks rather unprofessional. Lists don’t quite do the trick for me. I start multiple lists in different places. So when I came across a book about a highly visual project management system, I determined to give it a whirl in 2012.

Personal Kanban: Mapping Work/Navigating Life http://amzn.to/AvLC3V offered something I could relate to: making all you have to do visible on a board (instead of in a pile), and then literally moving work along—via sticky notes—as steps are taken for various projects. OK! Let me try that.

Here you see a table with piles.

Here is my start-up project board. Putting up colorful sticky notes is fun!

Here is a cleared table. The stuff has gone into file folders.

Let’s hope this actually helps me keep on top of things. Why? Because there are a lot of good ideas coming my way from current Upper Room authors and new writers who are submitting proposals. My job is to identify ones that align with The Upper Room’s mission and work with our editorial, production, marketing, and finance teams to get books out to individuals, small groups, and churches. And that’s an excellent reason to improve my work habits.

No matter what happens with the new system, I do have this motto to keep me going:

What motivates you to explore fresh starts in 2012?

(And please share your best organizing tips with me!)

Jeannie Crawford-Lee
Acquisitions Editor

“People tend to be under the delusion that because I’m a good writer, I can also speak in public,” I usually say. “I accepted your invitation in order to disabuse you of that misapprehension.” I then go on to share my passion for life, my latest book, the particular subject I’ve been asked to talk about, and for the written word in general.

What impresses  people who attend these public events is—most of the time—not so much any eloquence I offer, as it is the authenticity and enthusiasm I manage to communicate when I speak.

True Story: One morning, after I had addressed a downtown business gathering in Tampa, a middle-aged executive demanded an accounting: “You seem unusually enthusiastic,” he said, pointedly. “Please explain yourself.”

It was as if I’d crossed some kind of a line. Evidently I had upset the status quo of mediocrity and cultured disinterest. Because, as the man said, “It’s been years since anyone who came here spoke about anything they believed in as much as you obviously do.”

Here’s my point: What I’m talking about has everything to do with writing. There are two prerequisites to speaking in public, and they overlap nicely with the writing life.

1. You must exhibit a degree of mastery in the mechanics of your craft.
2. You must communicate passion for your subject matter.

Ditto writing:

1. Study, practice, solicit feedback, correct, push the envelope. Hone the skill and never stop learning.
2. Then—and this is the spiritual side of writing, the relational dimension—write with evident passion.

Now step back: OK, this is going to sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me. Writing specifically for publication is sometimes the worst thing you can do if you want passion in your prose. Fact is, the first person we should be writing for is ourselves. Write to touch your own soul.

When we capture our emotions and ideas in such a way that we catch our own breath, bring a tear to our own eye, or make ourselves chuckle, then it’s time to let the world look over our shoulder and see what we’re up to.

The first editor to ever accept a significant article from me wrote the following the day after he read my submission: “Derek, I took this home and read it to my wife over dinner. We both laughed until we cried. Thanks for the love you poured into your work.”

When some editor is jolted out of her or his reverie by the passion in your writing, that is when you have found your voice.

Listen for it in yourself first, then share.

DEREK
Read Derek Maul’s daily blog at www.derekmaul.wordpress.com <http://www.derekmaul.wordpress.com>

Writers often hear “Write for your audience.” Derek says Write first for yourself. Does that give you a new perspective?

For many writers, the biggest challenge is getting started. What do I write about today? How do I get going? Do I have any sense of direction? Shouldn’t I just clean the kitchen instead?

For me, getting started is a fairly simple process. It’s a routine, yes, but it’s a routine that’s tied specifically to my ongoing commitment to a life of faith that is contemplative at its foundation. Writing, like my entire day, begins in prayer; it finds its muse in meditation, and then develops its voice in devotion. It’s a practice that applies to both sacred and secular projects.

Here’s my theory. Forgive me if this sounds overly spiritual; but, honestly, this is where I am. If we really believe that we are made in the image of God, and if the foundational characteristic of God is “Creator,” then we simply must maintain a deliberate connection to God if we want our creativity to kick in in any significant way.

I begin, believe it or not, with the day’s devotional reading from The Upper Room daily devotional guide. I take the featured scripture verse along with me on my morning walk (45 minutes with Scout, my wife Rebekah’s huge, galumphing, labradoodle), meditate on the scripture, and let God’s Word seep into my consciousness and lead me into prayer.

Then, when I sit down at the computer – I say goodbye to Rebekah and walk to my study, the same as commuting to a regular job – I post a daily blog entry that typically reflects on how God has been speaking to me, either in my devotional time or via what has happened in the previous 24 hours.

My blog (http://www.derekmaul.wordpress.com) is built around the theme of “The Life-Charged Life.” Posting is, essentially, a “warm-up” exercise; it’s how I get my writing engine humming and it also helps keep me focused on the imperative of life.  However, rather than a throw-away routine, a great deal of what appears in my morning post can often be developed later into more substantive writing that turns out to be anything but disposable.

Many people worry about choices in their lives, and wonder if they’re “following the will of God.” Writing is no different. However, if we live, love, work, play, serve… and write through the filter of an ongoing walk of faith, then that perspective will naturally guide our direction.

Sometimes there’s a specific assignment from a newspaper or magazine, sometimes it’s the next chapter of a book, sometimes there’s just an emotion or an impression that you know you have to put into words. But—always—writing that emerges from a heart and mind that is in communion with God is going to be sharper, more insightful, and worthwhile.

Because God is my muse.
In love, and because of love – DEREK

Are you a writer or an aspiring writer? How do you get started? And what keeps you going?

In the world of traditional publishing we think in “lists”–the Fall List, the Spring List. These are collections of books marketed in their respective seasons through catalogs, sales calls to wholesale and retail booksellers, advertising, and PR efforts. At The List Meeting this week we will share information about the books to be published a year from now, on the Fall 2012 List.

A lot in the world of traditional publishing is changing or called into question with the advent of round-the-clock online sales via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., and consequent decline of bookstores; the various eBook platforms that have come into their own; and access to books on personal electronic devices like smart phones and tablets. What is the point of The List in this environment?

For authors, the list system may seem to create a needlessly protracted publishing timeline. “Why do I need to deliver a manuscript over a year in advance of publication??” When writers are self-publishing and some publishing operations abandoning the seasonal publishing template for quick turnarounds, it does make one wonder. What are we gaining from the traditional model?

Upper Room Books still markets to “the trade,” i.e., catalog and retail booksellers, which are accustomed to seasonal lists. Developing catalogs, preparing presentation materials for these vendors, and booking space ads in print requires time. That dictates the publishing timeline more than actual book production, which can be squeezed down considerably in a crunch. But if trade bookstores are declining as the place to buy books while online sources are growing, does it make sense for the former to still drive the publishing model of The List?

Sorry I don’t have a neat answer to conclude my ruminations. All I can say is publishers need to adapt creatively to the shifting dynamics of connecting writer to reader.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Acquisitions Editor

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains [http://amzn.to/r9pnyh] by Nicholas Carr  is an expansion of Carr’s earlier article in the The Atlantic, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Carr makes a compelling case for the idea that the medium through which we read does indeed exert its own power over our brains, even rewiring its circuitry. He cites recent brain research about the brain’s plasticity to back up his claims. The part of his thesis that stood out the most to me is the idea that reading on the Internet has made us become easily distracted and less able to read deeply. He says,

“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

Though I am grateful daily for the many ways that the Internet has made accessing a world of information so easy, I also don’t want to lose my capacity for concentration and contemplation—especially when it comes to reading spiritual material. I came away from reading the book with the desire to discipline my habits of being online and wired all of the time. I am trying to carve out more time, both at work and at home, for reading that does not involve jumping to multiple hyperlinks (even though my book or Bible reading may well be on an Ebook reading device).

What are your thoughts about online reading?

Have you experienced this kind of distractedness, or do you think Carr’s argument is exaggerated?

Robin Pippin, Associate Executive Director of Publishing

We are sinners. Of course, we have all sinned. And we know that we need to recognize that. We depend on the grace of Christ to free us from our sin and transform us into the people God wants us to be. We are sinners saved by grace. If we have read Martin Luther, we know that we can be both sinners and saints at the same time. “Total depravity” does not mean there is nothing good in us. It means that in every aspect of human life sin has messed us up. But God still loves us and desires an intimate relationship with us. We are created in the image and likeness of God.

Contemplation does not appear in the Bible. Yet the Bible does talk about Moses and Elijah and Jesus going to secluded places to spend time with God. The Bible speaks frequently about the “heart.” And that does not mean the organ that pumps blood but the core of our being. From the emotional, spiritual, and physical center of our being we can love God and enter into a deep communion with the divine.

Scripture is our authority. We rely on the words of the Bible for truth and guidance. If we listen to the whole scripture it teaches contemplative prayer. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Christ dwells in us (John 15:4). We take note that Jesus talked about our being “in” Christ. But he also said that Christ is in us. He said, “Abide with me as I abide in you.” Scripture teaches the indwelling presence of God. Contemplative prayer is a way of consenting to that presence and the work of God in us.

We tend to be active, not passive. We trust in God’s activity. God is always at work. It may seem that our response should also be active. We value obedience as a mark of a true Christian. But sometimes we need to be receptive, listen, and deeply be in communion. Activity is important, but we need rest and restoration as well. So recovery of the contemplative dimension can be healing. We can adopt new habits, as they are beneficial.

We’re not good at talking about spiritual experiences. If we do have deep experiences of the presence of God we don’t talk about it. Everyone has contemplative moments. In a spectacular scene or a confrontation with beauty or a flashing insight we experience the closeness of God. But we may not share that with anyone else. Some of us have traditions of testimony time in church. But even these may be canned and not very revelatory. In contemplative prayer we make a regular practice of openness to the reality of God. In sharing contemplative moments we can inspire each other.

We spend time with God in church but seldom in other places. There are times when we are especially aware of God. But often we try to manage things ourselves. We can go about our daily living without being conscious of God. Yet at every moment we depend on the gifts of God. The very gift of life itself means divine energy is flowing through us. In contemplative prayer we are aware of the Spirit of God and in contemplative living we pay attention to the presence and action of God in every moment. The awareness of God that is given to us in prayer becomes a way of life. Our consciousness of God grows as Christ transforms us from within. So we become more conscious of God in everyday life, in nature, in events, in people.

Conclusion. I have listed some of the reasons Protestants resist contemplative prayer. Some are important to me; you have to decide if there are some important to you. We can pray and think about them. We may be preventing ourselves from enjoying the contemplative dimension of prayer and life.

J. David Muyskens, author of Sacred Breath: Forty Days of Centering Prayer

Which barriers have you experienced? Have you moved past them? If so, how?

Guest blogger J. David Muyskens continues his observations on the barriers to contemplative prayer Protestants encounter as a result of common traditions, attitudes, and practices

We think a lot about the past and the future. We are often going over what has happened in the past. Or we may be planning what comes next. So we miss the present moment. But the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. We experience the gifts of God in the present moment. In contemplation we live right now. In Centering Prayer we let go of thoughts of the past and anticipation of the future. We take time to be in the moment with the presence of God and open to the immediate action of God. In contemplative prayer we celebrate the present, right now.

We want answers. For our many questions Protestants want clear answers. Large churches are filled with people who desire certitude. Most often the preachers in these growing churches seem to have answers. But the Bible talks about mystery. God is beyond our comprehension. The revelation Paul received, of which he speaks in Ephesians 3, is the mystery hidden for ages. This is not mystery as in a puzzle to be solved but mystery beyond human knowledge, only seen by the light the Holy Spirit can give. In contemplative prayer we stand amazed at the love of God not fully understood but known and experienced in the Spirit.

We are afraid to go deep because demons can dwell there. When we go to the place of silence and solitude we can meet the devil there. But actually, in contemplative prayer, we go to the most sacred sanctuary of Christ. We go to the inner sanctum where Christ dwells with great power and majesty. The devil cannot enter there because Christ’s power and glory expel him. We enter with Christ a fortress of inner strength.

We worship a faraway God. God cannot be contained by our imagination. We worship the all-powerful One, high and lifted up, worthy of our praise. But God is also near to us, dwelling within us. We are in God and God in us. God is both transcendent and immanent at the same time. Aware that God dwells in us and invites us to an intimate relationship, we become contemplatives. One of the great leaders of Protestantism, John Calvin, described the position of prayer as being held in the “bosom” of God (Institutes III, 20, 5). He described the intimate relationship we can have with God as being in the “sweetness of love” (Institutes III, 20. 28).

We are sinners. Of course, we have all sinned. And we know that we need to recognize that. We depend on the grace of Christ to free us from our sin and transform us into the people God wants us to be. We are sinners saved by grace. If we have read Martin Luther we know that we can be both sinners and saints at the same time. “Total depravity” does not mean there is nothing good in us. It means that in every aspect of human life sin has messed us up. But God still loves us and desires an intimate relationship with us. We are created in the image and likeness of God.

Have you experience with any of these barriers? Do you disagree with any of these points? Share your comments. David Muyskens will describe a final 5 barriers tomorrow.

A physician asked me, “Are you trying to do it all yourself?” My symptoms were caused by stress. I was trying to do it myself, leaving out my dependence on God. I did not have a private practice of prayer. The question caused me to find that missing ingredient. As I set up a daily practice of prayer I learned that prayer is not only talking to God but also listening and very much a matter of being in faith and love with my Creator, Lover, and Holy Spirit. In prayer I put into practice my relationship with the divine. I learned the practice of Centering Prayer by reading Basil Pennington and listening to tapes by Thomas Keating.

I am an ordained Protestant minister and a believer in contemplative prayer. I’m well acquainted with some of the resistances Protestants have toward contemplation. This week I will describe 15. Here are the first five:

Protestants consider contemplative prayer an Eastern practice. Eastern religions stress the importance of meditation. Many have thought that to find a quiet, silent prayer one had to go to the East. Since the 16^th century many churches had given up teaching contemplative prayer to ordinary people. In the 1970s three monks in Spencer, Massachusetts—Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington—observed that while contemplative prayer had always been part of the Christian tradition, contemporary people needed a new way to learn this dimension of the Christian tradition. William Meninger was especially familiar with The Cloud of Unknowing from the 14^th century. The three men developed modern guidelines for teaching an ancient way of prayer that could open a person to receive the gift of contemplation.

Protestants are suspicious of Catholics. Thank God this prejudice is declining! But the uneasiness between Protestants and Catholics still lingers. Catholics are more inclined to like contemplation. They have grown up with the mystics. Catholic communities of men and women are more inclined to be contemplative. As a result, some Protestants may associate contemplation with Catholicism. But now many Protestants are finding the value of spending time in silence with God. They appreciate having their relationship with God strengthened by contemplative prayer.

Contemplative prayer has not been taught in Protestant churches. The Protestant tradition and practice do not typically encourage people to be in silent prayer. And we tend to be leery of anything different than our usual experience. This suspicion keeps us from following heretical ideas and destructive practices, but it also can cut us off from some fountains of living water. We miss the contemplative part of the Christian tradition. As it is restored to the devotional practices available for Protestants we are encouraged to know the rich communion with God that is possible by the work of the Spirit. We need to take time for silence.

Prayer is considered a matter of talking to God. A friend of mine has little time for silent prayer because, he says, “if you have something to say to God, just say it.” He thinks of prayer entirely as a matter of petitions. But if prayer is a conversation then there has to be more than our talking. We also need to listen to God. And there are times when we simply commune with God, aware of God’s presence and consenting to God’s action in us. It is the same with any relationships in which we are engaged. We need to talk, but we also need to listen. Sometimes when we are most intimate with someone we spend part of our time together without words.

In a workshop where I was one of the presenters, a Protestant authority on prayer insisted that in every language prayer means petition. But prayer, as a relationship with God, includes at least three dimensions: listening, talking, and being together. Contemplative prayer emphasizes the dimension of spending time in awareness of the presence of God, not telling God about our needs at that moment.

We customarily use our minds to know truth. Our creeds are intellectual statements. In belief we primarily think of propositions of doctrine. Feelings are suspect because they can be fickle. But faith engulfs the whole person from the very core of our being. That includes the heart as well as the mind. The whole person can be in silent and deep communion with God. The devil can play tricks with our mind as well as our heart, so we need to apply the same cautions to both means of knowing.

J. David Muyskens, author of Forty Days to a Closer Walk with God and Sacred Breath.

What has been your experience with contemplative prayer? Add your comment here.

Now that I’m sitting in the acquisitions chair here at Upper Room Books, I’m repeatedly tipping my virtual hat to JoAnn Miller, Lynne Deming, and Robin Pippin. These three women, in that order, capably managed acquisitions over the 11 years I have worked here. How did they keep all these balls in the air and not overlook something important?

One “ball” that’s rolled off the playing field lately is this blog. It’s time to bring it back into the game, and here are a few coming attractions: guest posts from Upper Room authors Derek Maul, Pat Wilson, and David Muyskens.

As for balls in the air, it’s exciting to be talking with writers both familiar and new about what they might develop for the readers we serve. These men and women have stories to tell about God at work in the world and how we can be open to the Spirit in our own lives.

Thanks to Robin Pippin’s cultivation one ball in the air is MY STORY, MY SONG. This book is a marvelous collaboration among writer Missy Buchanan, Lucimarian Roberts, and Mrs. Roberts’s daughter, Robin Roberts (yes, that Robin Roberts, host of Good Morning America!).

The subtitle, “Mother-Daughter Reflections on Life and Faith,” hints at the treasures inside. Take a look at  Robin’s reaction on a GMA segment to a news story about her mom receiving an award in Mississippi—http://abcn.ws/pJpNAv

MY STORY, MY SONG will be available for Mother’s Day 2012. Don’t miss it!

And subscribe to this blog to find out what Upper Room writers and editors are talking about.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Acquisitions Editor

Instead, I force myself to remain seated and gaze at the blank Word document as the cursor blinks at me intently and expectantly, waiting for me to say something. Ultimately, my fingers will strike keys, the blinking cursor embark upon its trek from the left margin to the right, and words appear on the page. I then exhale.

Second only to the anxiety of actually beginning an essay, I have found the most significant challenge of writing to be that obscure and peculiar art of reordering my jumbled and often disconnected thoughts into something linear and sequential, something that in their new life outside of my head assume the form of paragraphs, epigraphs, footnotes, and punctuation.  I have come to realize that the difficulty lies not in finding words that accurately represent and articulate my thoughts but in placing the words in the right order. I say to myself over and over that I can write, and write well for that matter, if I can get words on the page and get them there in a sensible and coherent order.

Among those of us who love to write, for whom it is a calling, a vocation, a passion, or something somewhere therein, the anxiety found in those first moments of taking up the pen is not sufficient to deter us from our charge, which, to put it simply if not understatedly, is to locate in language the beauty and complexity of human existence in its myriad forms and multiple dimensions. A friend once said to me that writing, for those who love it and do it well, is like childbirth. One inevitably forgets how bad it hurts and does it again.

If I have learned anything from writing, it is that those initial feelings of anxiety and paralysis that assil me at the beginning of each new essay eventually subside—but only for the duration of the essay on which I am working. Assuredly, like the pains of giving birth, the anxiety, apprehension, and sweaty palms will be there when I set about the task once more.

Andrew Breeden, Upper Room Books Intern

With an original copyright of 1935, The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White still offers wisdom to writers. The fourth edition of 2000 offered a few modest updates, and the book’s 105 pages of instruction about the writing life seem far more approachable than the 956 pages in The Chicago Manual of Style. I now have the updated 2011 edition by William Strunk on my iPad.

The era of email and texting might reinforce the opening statement about omitting needless words. And tweets certainly encourage brevity. However, the vast expanse of a book seems to lend itself to authors’ excess despite the assertion in The Elements of Style that “vigorous writing is concise.” Other guiding principles the book offers are these:

•  Use the active voice (rule 11, current edition)

•  Put statements in positive form (rule 12, current edition)

As the introduction to this volume points out, adherence to some simple rules produces forcible writing. The author notes that writers who disregard the rules may offer the reader some compensating merit in his or her sentences, which comes “at the cost of . . . violation.” Violation—a strong word that aptly describes my experience when accosted by obtuse writing.

I recall an author who stated that his meditative writing style had been destroyed by my editing. When I highlighted what had been removed throughout, the highlighted areas of the manuscript were basically these: “this is, that is, there is” and multiple instances of ellipsis points. We came to an understanding through compromise; neither of us felt good about the concessions.

Beyond reliance on the passive voice, the overuse of verbs of being by authors seems to imply that thesauruses no longer exist. So many active options! In a visit with my daughter, she recently said to me, “Use nouns, Mother!” as I babbled on about a “thingamabob.” I often want to say, “Use action words, authors!”

I commend The Elements of Style to those who desire to write clearly and concisely. It’s 76 years old and still going strong.

Rita Collett, Managing Editor

The office to which I would be moving was smaller than the one I currently occupied. Letting go was unavoidable. A sigh of resignation rose as I anticipated the size of the sacrificial offering I would have to place on the altar of de-cluttering. Yet some decisions almost made themselves without much involvement on my part. I put the sheaf of 1987 memos from a long-defunct unit in our company into the recycling bin without pain. Handouts from various consultations required more attention. Wouldn’t these diagrams of congregational spiritual formation and flow charts of editorial processes be important to keep for a future undertaking? Anxiety passed over me like the shadow of a raptor across a bright meadow. I had to decide. Into the bin they went! But some things—the books, those patient friends who wait silently nearby until you cry out for help—required the assistance of a colleague gifted in the arts of personal organization. Only with the gentle encouragement and practical strategies she offered was I finally able to say a silent au revoir and place dozens upon dozens of tomes on the give-away table.

My office move has reminded me that writing for publication also involves letting go. We begin with an abundance of impressions, intuitions, and ideas. Some are recent arrivals while others have been with us for years. But to bring these elements into some appealing proposal that might attract the attention of a publisher, we need to be selective. A scholarly friend once told me that in his work the first and most critical writing challenge was determining which aspects of his research to leave out of the next book. Letting go.

Once we have settled on the shape and direction of our undertaking, we need to begin writing. How intimidating the blank page can be, boldly daring us to build sentences that improve its unspoiled landscape. But build we do, and build and build until first one page and then others are filled with wonder upon wonder, and every wonder true. Perhaps, however, not every sentence is equally wonderful or equally true. Perhaps not every paragraph will fit within the available space. We know we need to trim the text. We give it careful attention, looking for the words, phrases, or whole clusters of thought that need to be placed in the nearest recycling can. Heartache and anxiety may accompany such letting go.

Heartache and anxiety are mere shadows on our ego compared with the possible loss of consciousness brought on by the advice of one famous writer: Delete the sentences you like the most. What? Those are the ones that tingled my spine and made me happy when I wrote them! Well, whether it is favorite sentences or hard-won insights or sections distilled from long hours spent staring at the computer screen, they may not contribute to the strength of the literary edifice we are erecting on the costly real estate of the page. Here is that point in the process of writing when our resolve to cut and tighten may not be sufficient. We need the encouragement and experience of a wise editor. At their best, editors are companions on the sometimes difficult journey from conception to completion of a manuscript.

Good editors help us make the move from writer to author, a move that usually involves some letting go.

John S. Mogabgab, Special Projects Editor

SoulFeast worship space

Every year since 2004, The Upper Room has set the spiritual table for about 500 people at what has become our signature event, SoulFeast [http://upperroom.org/soulfeast/]. Along with those attendees, many staff members of The Upper Room make the pilgrimage over to Lake Junaluska Assembly in Western North Carolina. [http://www.lakejunaluska.com]

For me, the event is a real highlight of the year. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of work! Whether you are the publisher of The Upper Room or an intern, all are expected to load and unload the truck, as well as do whatever else is needed to help the event go well.

The event is a blessing for staff in so many ways. We enjoy the interaction with attendees who come hungry for more of God’s presence. We enjoy the teaching of speakers like Trevor Hudson of Benoni, South Africa [http://bit.ly/q1Ei1R]. We enjoy talking with our Upper Room authors, face to face. It is also a chance for us to get out from behind the desk and to talk with many people who regularly read The Upper Room daily devotional guide [http://upperroom.org/devotional/index.html] and our other books.

Trevor Hudson preaching July 2011

I heartily endorse this event and invite you to consider putting SoulFeast 2012 dates on your summer calendar (July 8–12, 2012). I hope to see you there!

Robin Pippin, Associate Executive Director of Publishing

Having started my publishing career when Linotype machines http://bit.ly/mPEi2r populated the printing department and correspondence advanced at the pace of U.S. Postal Service deliveries, I’ve witnessed a lot of change in the industry. The change keeps speeding up, and today’s social media (http://bit.ly/j5nzMp) and personal media innovations offer many paths of opportunity. But which path(s) to take and how to negotiate them? Those are big questions for a publisher today.

At Upper Room Books we are acquainting ourselves with—and often enthusiastically embracing—the new ways of communicating, reading, and marketing—from Twitter to iPads. We are digitizing  content as fast as we can. The variety of reading platforms and ways to interact with writers and readers adds to publishing’s already multifaceted nature. It makes this business all the more fascinating!

Books & iPad with nook app

When it comes to content, though, we aim to sustain our core strengths and values: providing resources to guide individuals, small groups, and churches in prayer and Christian spiritual formation. “Inspiring devotion, creating community,” our unofficial tagline, expresses our goal succinctly. As acquisitions editor, I look forward to working with writers who share that calling. No matter how the technologies evolve, our human need for connecting to God continues. I’m privileged to have this new role in The Upper Room’s ministry.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Acquisitions Editor

Jeannie Crawford-Lee has been promoted to Acquisitions Editor of Upper Room Books. She will work with new and returning authors on our line of books and E-books.
Joanna Bradley has been promoted to Assistant Editor and is beginning to do project editing as well as keep up the administrative duties of our Books area. Joanna has a special emphasis in digital content editing and preparation.

As Associate Executive Director of Publishing, I will be responsible for day-to-day oversight of Upper Room Books and Magazines, with a focus on digital content production in these areas. We have a wealth of spiritual formation content in our magazines and books. We are excited about the possibility of offering this content in ever-new arrangements and formats.

To make these changes even more interesting, all our Upper Room Books editors are moving offices in the next three weeks. We will be sitting amongst the Magazines staff and working more collaboratively than we have in quite a while.

So if we are a little slow in responding to you in the next few weeks, know that we will get back to you as soon as we get settled.

So, that’s what we are doing this summer. How about you?

Robin Pippin, Associate Executive Director of Publishing

Lauren described how the labyrinth is a path of prayer and a “mirror of the soul.” Walking a labyrinth brings insight into how the soul is maturing and how God is actually working in our lives. As we walk the labyrinth’s narrow path, we will encounter others along the way and need to wait for them to pass us or to move forward. Waiting, Lauren reminded us, is the foundation of the spiritual life. She also encouraged us to see everything that occurs on a walk as metaphor for spiritual truth. And more than once she emphasized that a labyrinth is not a maze. Mazes are designed to confuse us, causing us to become lost in dead-ends. Labyrinths are patterned paths designed to order confusion, allowing us to find our way to the center of things—our spiritual destination

The experiences and insights of that retreat surfaced in my memory recently as I was returning home from a trip to Toronto, Canada. Some employees of the airline I was using had gone on strike the previous midnight. Would I encounter difficulties with my flight?

Tension spread through my body as I entered the snaking cordoned pathway that led to the ticket counter. Many travelers were ahead of me, shuffling slowly toward the front of the line, not knowing what they would learn about flight schedules when they finally came face to face with an agent. My bag seemed especially heavy as I pushed and dragged it along. Then I recalled the labyrinth retreat and the invitation to see all as metaphor for spiritual realities.

What about this tension coursing through my limbs and up my back as I inched along the path? Yes, I wanted my flight to take off on time. But spiritually what was happening? Was I trying to lasso the future, tie it down, and impose the brand of my desire on it? Could I relinquish my strained effort to subdue the future, trusting that a larger, wiser, more generous purpose was at work in this situation?

What about my impatience with people in front of me who did not move forward when the rest of the line did or took too much time with an agent once they reached the ticket counter? Could I wait in patient expectation that there would be time enough for everyone’s concerns to be addressed, my own included? Did I really believe that God knew and attended to my cares better than I did myself?

What about this heavy bag that seemed heavier with every step and which I would have to check, I suddenly realized with anxious dismay, without a name and address tag? News reports had suggested that in view of the strike it would be wise to carry on your luggage. My bag was stuffed with things I thought I would need for my trip. What ways of viewing the world had I stuffed into my inner luggage, convinced that they were necessary for my success in life? Could I release my grip on them, letting go so that I might receive them back with greater detachment or lose them in favor of more suitable spiritual provisions?

When I finally arrived at my gate, I was filled with gratitude that all through Pearson International Airport I had been walking a sacred path.

What sacred path are you walking today?

John S. Mogabgab, Special Projects Editor

After college graduation, my risk-taking son and two friends set out to bicycle across the country: from Charleston, SC to San Francisco. Over 3,000 miles in 65 days.

They rode to support two charities. None of the three had ever ridden more than 50 miles in a day’s time. And as they pulled this feat together, I found myself appalled at the expense! Special shoes, padded riding shorts, wick-away jerseys! Good heavens! I felt sure the charities would come out ahead if the family members just gave the preparation money straight to them. But the young men and we, the family members, would have missed the experience of a lifetime.

I, being the constant worrier that I am, kept conjuring up scenes from Easy Rider. But the guys, armed with confidence, the brashness of youth, and good health, set out. Bad weather, broken spokes, pastors who spoke in tongues, farmers who invited them to “sit a spell,” welcome signs and tents set up for them along the way, phone calls from the Continental Divide—all were part of the journey, and the stories spilled forth. They made a memory.

I often wonder what my memories will hold if I never take a risk. What risks have you taken? What stories do you have to tell? What memories have you made?

Rita Collett, Managing Editor

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I’m noticing an uptick in my prayer life since then. Can anyone relate?

As I sat in the crowded, small waiting room of our local DMV, I watched him slowly backing out in my minivan, with the driving instructor in the front seat with him.  I breathed a prayer for him. Be with my son, O God. Help him to focus.

I saw him return, carefully parking the van. I watched him walk into the station, and I looked for any telltale sign about the outcome. He tried to keep a straight face; but when he looked at me, a huge grin escaped.

When we got home that afternoon, he was out of the door in less than fifteen minutes. He wanted to go tell his best friend in person about his new status as independent driver. I was proud of him for passing the test, but my mother-heart was kneeling in prayer while he was out driving. Help my son to be safe. Bring him back to me!

Seeing him walk out the door brought me back to the day I got my driver’s license, many, many years ago.  I asked my dad for the keys and ventured out for a one-mile drive to the local convenience mart and back. What a sense of liberty, to be out in the car alone! When I pulled back into the driveway, about fifteen minutes later, my dad was waiting out in the yard for me. I got out of the car, and he hugged me tightly and said, “I’m so glad you made it back!” We’ve laughed about that story over the years.

It was a milestone for my son and a new chapter in my life as a mother, letting go just a little bit more as he prepares to launch out in the years ahead. It is also a time when I draw just a little bit closer to God and have an opportunity to practice that very short verse in the Bible: Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

How about you? What is inspiring you to pray more lately?

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

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Guest blogger Linda Douty will lead workshops at The Upper Room’s 2011 SoulFeast at Lake Junaluska, NC July 10–14. http://bit.ly/cG8rSD

I feel like a hypocrite today. Having just completed a book entitled How Did I Get to Be 70 When I’m 35 Inside?- Spiritual Surprises of Later Life, one would think that means ME.  Some days, it does . . . only not today. I’m actually 71 and feel every single day of it.

What happened to that early morning bounce, that genuine greeting of “This is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it”? Who knows why my body decided to send multiple messages of malfunction to me today?

• My right knee is reminding me that I’m running out of cartilage.
• My fingers are telling me that (using my Grandmother’s favorite nickname for arthritis) “Old Arthur” is coming to call.
• My rumbling tummy is signaling that gorging on spicy food last night may have been a tactical error.
• My heavy eyes urge me to take a nap.

But there’s a special value to these dog days, I think. It reminds us to take seriously the wisdom in Psalm 131:2: “But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother. . . .”

So today, whether I feel lively or sluggish, I can rest in the arms of God like a weaned child on her mother’s lap. That dependable comfort can restore my soul and help me to feel 35 again.  Now that should put the bounce back in my step!

Linda Douty

spiritual director, author, and retreat leader

In addition to weather concerns, Nashville’s current cicada visitation seemed inauspicious. The flying insects, which emerge from the ground once every 17 years for mating, make quite a racket. There are thousands of them, and they sound rather like an alien invasion. Plus, the creatures careen unpredictably through the air, often colliding with folks.

Cicada on magnolia leaf.

The thought of cicadas crashing into Commencement speakers or onto the heads of the guests was a bit daunting. And I wondered if the bagpipers would be heard above the roar of the insects.  Nevertheless, Commencement happened, and the handsome and articulate young men who had entered this school as awkward pre-teens were launched into the world.

Last June my older son’s college Commencement was delayed by a violent thunderstorm, and lightning still punctuated the sky as robed students marched onto the stadium field. But Commencement happened. Cocooned college life ended, and young adults set forth to make their way in an inhospitable economic environment.

Both my own high school and college Commencements were moved indoors due to rain. I was pretty miffed both times—how unfair! But on to the next adventures I plunged.

We want a beautiful, perfect moment—sunny skies and cool breezes—in which to start something fresh, to dedicate ourselves to the future. How often does that actually happen?

I can’t miss the parallel to spiritual life: as the Rule of St. Benedict reminds us, “always we begin again.” And often we have to embark on new paths, commitments, or just the next day in the midst of imperfect, messy conditions. We may be stressed, wounded, guilty, sad, confused, or uncertain. We’re not serene, prepared, and sunny! Yet commence we must. Each commencement can become an act of faith when we acknowledge that God’s grace surrounds our imperfection and God’s love strengthens us for the journey.

Any commencements in your life recently?

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Developmental Editor

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Guest blogger Linda Douty

I’ve spent all day on I-40, returning from a conference—long, humdrum hours in familiar terrain.  Lately, I feel as if this stretch of interstate highway has become my home away from home.  How can I offer this mundane part of my life to be enriched by God?

Sometimes merely asking a question can become a prayer, a kind of opening to divine leading. Trusting that, I clear my mind and allow it to wander freely with no imposed agenda as the miles rolled by. Soon I become aware of an invisible companion—the Holy Spirit steering my thoughts through the visible cues around me, passing through the uninterrupted time.

• A bridge reminds me that Christ is my constant “bridge over troubled waters.”
• The trucks and speeding sports cars became representatives of my world community as I breathe a prayer for their safety.
• Around the bend, a mountain range springs into view like a startling surprise, a reminder of the free gifts of creation.
• The long, winding road brings to memory the meandering road of relationships threading through my life.
• The white center line on the pavement becomes a symbol of the plumb line, a biblical image that keeps me on track.
• Roadside barriers correspond with the boundaries that must be observed to keep me safe.
• Towering trees stand for the green growth in my spiritual life that needs deep roots.
• Tangled vines prompt memories of the “vine and the branches,” a metaphor voiced in the teachings of Jesus.

Prayer guides that have mentored all of us through the years urge us to “pray as you can, not as you can’t.”  So, the open road can become a rich visual buffet of images at times when we can’t close our eyes or kneel at the altar. In these expansive ways, we can allow our lives to become prayers, prompting us toward a relationship with God in the midst of life, not in spite of life.

So what is my life today?  Eight hours on I-40.  I turn off the radio, mute the cellphone, and open myself to wordless communication with God, gazing into the sun that sustains all life, including mine.  Maybe, with the guidance of grace and a little imagination, we can make driving a discipline and the interstate an altar.

Linda Douty is author of Praying in the Messiness of Life: 7 ways to renew your relationship with God.

So there we have it: three weddings.

During this same time span, my biological father in Germany died, which required a quick trip to Europe. So, three weddings and a funeral. Sounds like a good name for a movie.

And what you may ask does all this activity mean for spiritual life? It means that my prayer life has literally been on a wing and a prayer as I’ve involved myself in relationship after relationship: new family members, old family members. I’m giving cups of cold water to the least and the greatest—and it is all good.

I have sat in the midst of laughing crowds with great music and food, and I have sat at table in the midst of grief and German cold cuts and pall bearers all in black with top hats. Every setting has had its own revelations, and I am the richer for them. For the driven Type-A person that I am, learning simply to be present in the moment to those around me—even if they’re speaking a foreign language—brings blessing. Relationship, relationship, relationship.

Rita Collett, Managing Editor

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Thanks for joining us here—and happy reading!

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director of Upper Room Books

We welcome guest blogger Missy Buchanan!

Recently my two-year-old grandson and I got in line at a frozen yogurt shop. We happened to walk up on a conversation between a boy, about six years old, and his mother, who were standing in front of us.
I don’t know what the mother had said to the boy, but suddenly he looked up at her and responded in a loud voice, “ Mom, she’s OLD! She must be at least 30!”
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. As I held the hand of my grandson, one particular thought kept running through my mind. No matter where we are on the time line of life, this notion of aging can be quite confusing.

It made me ponder once again the question that I love to ask others. When do you become old? Is it when AARP sends their membership packet? When you finally get your first Social Security check? Or is it when you are given a senior menu without asking for it?
Not surprisingly, old really is in the eye of the beholder. But what intrigues me even more is the terrible reputation that aging seems to be getting these days. Lots of people break into a sweat at the mention of the word old, particularly if they think it refers to them.
Now don’t get me wrong. Like everyone else, I want to be healthy and active for as long as possible. But I can’t help but wonder if we have tipped the scales of conversation too much. Have we become so overly sensitive about growing old that we turn up our noses and shun aging like some unscrupulous politician?
Not long ago I was involved in a situation about aging that was both puzzling and funny. I was engaged in an online conversation on Twitter about the future of the United Methodist Church. Near the end of the discussion, someone posted a question about the ages of those involved in the online chat. Not surprisingly, at almost 60 years old, I was the oldest of those who responded. Most participants were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. I laughed to myself and wondered what these young folks thought about someone my age entering their conversation.
Missy Buchanan
On Twitter @missybuchanan
www.missybuchanan.com
author, DON’T WRITE MY OBITUARY JUST YET

Back to 60 Minutes. The show focused most of the hour on Mount Athos, a remote peninsula in northern Greece that is home to twenty Orthodox monasteries and more than two thousand Orthodox monks. http://bit.ly/myBfO2
Mount Athos is viewed by the Orthodox Church as the most holy place on the face of the earth. I found the depiction of the monks’ Spartan life of prayer, unchanged and uninterrupted for more than one thousand years, to be remarkable on many levels.

The monks practice silence most of the time. They eat in silence (two meals a day that last ten minutes each), and they work in silence (they grow all their own food and are completely self-sufficient on the peninsula). But whatever they are doing, they are praying.

Bob Simon, the 60 Minutes reporter covering the story said, “When you look at [the] monks, you can see that their lips never stop moving. Not for a second. They just keep reciting the Jesus prayer day and night: ‘Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.’ It becomes like breathing. Some monks say they can pray when they sleep, and they get no more than three hours sleep a night.”

They take very seriously the biblical injunction to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

I was struck by a statement made by Michael Karzis, 60 Minutes producer, in the “Overtime” link about the background of making that show. http://bit.ly/kRDHlK
I could tell that Karzis was moved by the life of prayer he observed at Mount Athos. He said, “Monks are praying all the time—it’s like a blast furnace of prayer for the rest of the world. While you and I are going about our business Monday through Saturday, they are picking up the prayer for us.”

I imagine that to visit Mount Athos is to be able to feel tangibly the “heat” of the prayers of thousands of people over thousands of years in the very soil and walls of the place. I found myself grateful for those men (and yes, they are all men) who have made their very lives a prayer for the world. I think their prayers do make a difference in the world. I would like to think that I join my prayers with theirs as I, haltingly and stumblingly, try to pray and know what it means to “pray without ceasing.”

If you would like to watch the segment, here are two links that will give you the show in its entirety:
Part 1: http://bit.ly/jhhsSJ
Part 2: http://bit.ly/ig0mJz

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

To behold the hidden face of God is the longing behind our spiritual quest; and this longing is itself the grace that guides us to recognize God’s face “hidden” in our midst. Beholding and longing propel the Christian life toward its fulfillment: the movement from seeing God in a mirror, dimly, to seeing God face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). This unmediated vision of God is the great goal that has inspired generations of Christians. But en route to that blazing clarification, in the thick atmosphere of daily life, we have more difficulty seeing the One we seek. We may have difficulty even catching a glimpse of the Holy One in the rough and tumble of our days. The world we inhabit is filled with distraction, frustration, heartache, betrayal, suffering and injustice—an impenetrable thicket of tangled motivations, relationships, and aspirations that limit our capacity to see deeply.

I believe spiritual writing can offer both author and reader the space and time for a new vision, a new encounter, a new direction in life. Let me apply to such writing what sixth-century theologian Jacob of Serugh says of prayer, for writing and prayer can be closely related:

By it one enters to behold the mystery of hidden things.”*

Spiritual writing asks of us a vulnerability fostered by loving attentiveness to God. Through our writing we offer God words born of love from the very center of our being. Our heart is opened before the Holy One, ready to receive in return the greater love that clarifies our vision and allows us to see both more fully and frequently the “goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Ps. 27:13).

As we are faithful to this discipline of the pen, a strange thing can happen.

The words we write are, as it were, turned inside out and directed back toward our readers and us. The words are still ours, yet now they are weighted with something more than what we put into them, some measure of eternity that fills our longing and brightens our beholding. To paraphrase words attributed to Nicholas Herman:

Behold the wonderful exchange
Our Lord with us doth make!
Lo, God assumes our mortal words
And we of heaven’s speech partake.

What has been your experience of writing or reading spiritual material?

John S. Mogabgab
Special Projects Editor

* Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Pubns., 1987), 171.

If we had been doing either of those things, I would object as well. Instead, the Seder we observed was an adaptation: a specifically Christian Haggadah, crafted some years ago by one of my best friends in ministry, Michael Smith, a Baptist pastor, and one of his best friends in ministry, Rami Shapiro, a Reformed Rabbi. Their work was published under the title Let Us Break Bread Together: A Passover Haggadah for Christians (http://amzn.to/f226QD).

The service and meal were extraordinarily moving. There is something about real ritual—the retelling of an ancient story ever new, and the symbolic portrayal of that meal. It is clear that the Jews have it all over us Christians in terms of ritualized memory. Our time reminded me of Fred Craddock’s notion of the “power of the familiar”—how hearing something we already know can make even old knowledge new and fresh.

As I told the story of the Exodus, I felt—that was the thing: I felt it—that I who was telling it, and we who were hearing it, had also been liberated in some fashion by the power of God as he “got glory over Pharaoh.” I teared up more than once, and not least to remember that this kind of meal was the last fellowship Jesus shared with his disciples. I was humbled to be heir to such memory and community, and humbled to lead my people more deeply into it.

One part of the Haggadah especially spoke to me last evening. Just after the famous “four questions” (Why is this night different from all other nights? and so forth), the leader reminds the gathered that there are four kinds of “questioners” (in Jewish Tradition these correspond to “four sons”): the Wise one, who asks, “What is the meaning of Passover?”; the foolish one, who asks, “Why do you bother with all of this?”; the simple one, who asks, “What do the foods mean and why do we share them?”; the young one, whose ready silence encourages the telling of the Story.

I could not help thinking about the congregations I have served through the years—and how Lent especially reveals four kinds of parishioners:
• some seek deeper meaning and connection with God, the tradition, and one another;
• some cannot be bothered, so by attitude, action, and word they separate themselves from heritage and fellowship;
• some just want straight answers and no mystery—at least not yet;
• and many are silent; in (nascent) faith they create a space into which the Gospel can be told again, in word and rituals, unto the liberation of all our souls.

Dr. Thomas Steagald,
Author, Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus

Be any of that as it may, I myself am riding two animals this week, “Pride” and “Despair” by name.

As to the first: I love Holy Week. This is not “ordinary” time in any sense. But if I am not very careful, my sentiment serves to saddle Pride. In short, I am determined to provide multiple worship opportunities during Holy Week for my congregation, and so I do; but as I do, I begin to canter: What a great pastor I am! How fortunate my people are to have a pastor who works so hard to make Holy Week, well, holy! Not like other pastors I know, who can’t be bothered. No, I honor the traditions of the elders! And I am a martyr as well as a saint: I sacrifice sleep! I don’t play golf! No, I set this week aside for worship.

Pride: it nickers, it whinnies; it gallops; it tramples my would-be selflessness—turns it into self-satisfaction, and condescension toward those who do not likewise schedule or participate.

Ah, but riding alongside that big donkey is its foal: Despair.

I am often too dependent on “reaction” to validate my work and spirituality. I have scheduled fifteen services this week, three each day; most are simple contemplative prayer services. But we will do a Seder on Wednesday evening, a foot washing on Thursday evening, the Stations of the Cross on Friday at noon, and a Tenebrae Friday evening (I know, I know: that is backwards, but it is a pastoral concession to schedules and such). But what if nobody comes? Or nobody much?

Woodcarving of da Vinci's "The Last Supper" © 1953 The Upper Room

As I looked at the crowd on Palm Sunday, noting the schedule for the week, I knew even then that most of the folk will not return till next Sunday. And if they don’t, that must mean I am a terrible pastor, that my ministry is much ado about nothing, that I am nothing.

Meanwhile, Jesus makes his way to the Temple and Bethany, toward the Upper Room and Gethsemane, toward the home of Caiaphas and the hilltop called Golgotha. . . . Somehow I have got to get off my high horse and my low horse and quit thinking about me: what I am or what I am not. If this week is to be holy at all, I have to think about Jesus, who he is and what he is doing. Only about Jesus. He is the Holy of this Week.

Dr. Thomas Steagald
Author, Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus

Guest blogger Tom Steagald

James Taylor and Carole King would not have approved of Jesus’ behavior in John 11. You may remember how, back in the early seventies, they sang—with great conviction—“You just call out my name, and you know wherever I am, I’ll come running. . . . You’ve got a friend.”

But Jesus did not come running, even though Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were his friends, and he theirs. More even than that: Jesus loved Lazarus, loved the sisters. And so naturally, after Jesus hears that Lazarus, whom he loves, is sick, he waits two more days before even starting for Bethany.

Is this any way for Jesus to treat his friends?

When Martha sees Jesus and his disciples, finally coming down the road (though Lazarus is dead as Marley), she bolts out of the house and gets in Jesus’ face (though she kneels at his feet). She demands to know why: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”

William Blake's Raising of Lazarus

Translation? “Why weren’t you here?
Why didn’t you come when we called? We believe in you. Don’t you care about us at all?” Mary says the same thing a little later.

Truth to tell, I have felt like the sisters, though I am not so bold as they, nor nearly so bold as many other pray-ers in scripture. “Rouse yourself! Rend the heavens and come down! Save us! Can’t you see we are drowning! Where are you?” So many times I have wanted to scream that kind of prayer at heaven, “’Kumbaya!’ for God’s sake!” Seldom have I actually done it. Why? What binds my prayers?

Well, for one thing, I have been taught that I should not question Jesus, or God—should not tell the whole truth of how I feel because it may sound disrespectful—I am dust, after all. What I want or feel hardly matters to the Almighty.

Too, what I am praying may be selfish, even if I am praying for someone else. Mary and Martha pray for themselves as much as for Lazarus in John 11, but I know I am not supposed to pray selfish prayers.
I may not have all the facts either, may not see the bigger picture. In John 11 a miracle is coming. John says that is the point of Jesus’ delay—that Jesus’ power would be plain. Uh, maybe.

In any case, I don’t want to sound like a TV preacher. Or maybe—this could be big—I am not altogether convinced Jesus really is my friend, that he really loves me. Others, yes. Me? Not so sure.

In all honesty, though, the biggest stumbling block may be this: if I ask—boldly—and Jesus does for me what I ask, I may have to do what Jesus asks in turn, and I am not sure I want to be that obligated.

Dr. Thomas Steagald
Check out Tom’s “Preaching Journal” at http://www.goodpreacher.com

Guest blogger Tom Steagald

Lent is characterized, so the liturgies say, by “self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s Holy Word.” In all truth, however, our attention is more likely governed by other interests—
• some of them fun, on account of the coming of spring: March Madness, Opening Day at the Masters;
• some of them frightening and worrisome, and not less so because they are “far away”: tsunamis, potential nuclear meltdowns, continued warfare in so many places;
• some of them just aggravating, since the election cycle never ends: political wrangling, stentorian self-aggrandizing, posturing, all under the veil of who really speaks for “the American people.”

Closer to home, literally, have you seen my yard? The hail storms on Saturday night pounded, pounded, my tulips and trees. But pulling my son off the couch to help me rake and blow and collect debris makes me feel like Sisyphus on this side of the mountain.

Perhaps I am not the only one who feels bounced back and forth, violently, between fun and fear, between “Stop the presses!” and drudgery, between “Emergency!” and “Bored!”

(As an aside—I seem to remember from eighth-grade science that hail forms when the atmosphere is most unsettled and turbulent: moisture is bounced violently inside of clouds; ice forms as the moisture is thrust high then hurled down destructively. Ding! Ding! Ding! In turbulent times, we too, I fear, are liable to be bounced around mercilessly, and if our hearts turn to ice, we can easily hurt people.)

In sum, this season’s goal of spiritual focus is routinely diffused by unspiritual distractions—nature, sports, the unsettled earth, atmosphere, and economy. Might that be why Lent seems to have passed so quickly? Is it the week before Palm Sunday already? By design and theology Lent is supposed to slow me down. Reality is quite the contrary—and not only because of pastoral work and Daylight Savings Time.

That said, I am still trying to answer the Lenten liturgy’s call: I am examining myself, and in particular, my prayers—thus combining, if you please, two of the prescribed Lenten disciplines.

I want to know why my prayers are so meek. So weak, even. Unlike Martha and Mary’s (John 11:21). Unlike the psalmist’s (44:23). Unlike the prophet’s (Isa. 59:5) or even the faithless disciples’ (Matthew 8:25). I have some ideas about this state of my prayers, and I will catalog them in my next blog post here; but for now, perhaps today, you might examine your own prayers.

What do you pray? More importantly, what don’t you pray? What do you think about but don’t pray about? What do you pray about but don’t think about? And how might answering those questions bring Lent into focus?

Dr. Tom Steagald, Lafayette Street UMC, Shelby, NC
Author, Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus

Chelsea, New York. Photo by magnetmotive.

A pastor friend of mine who served a local church received a request from two divinity school friends who had chosen to “live among the poor,” quite literally. The two friends lived and served in a specialized ministry, attempting to minister to the homeless and marginalized in many ways and encouraging cottage industries. The two sent a request to the pastor asking for contributions to support their work. The kicker was this sentence: “Since we’re doing real ministry.”

Ah, what a firestorm that started. The pastor got in his car and made the three-hour trip to visit the friends. He wanted to sit down and talk the matter out. I believe they came to some agreement that perhaps local church work was equally valid as ministry.

It’s a troubling matter for me, this taking up my cross while noting that the poor will be with us always. Whenever I start toting up my credits, I sound a lot like the Pharisee in the Temple praying: I’m a decent human being; I don’t kick dogs; I tithe. What constitutes legitimate ministry? How do I involve myself? Are the affluent any less spiritually needy? More questions than answers . . .

For some possible answers, check out the Sojourners Web site. http://www.sojourners.com/

Rita Collett, Managing Editor

Almost everything we do at The Upper Room stems from the intention of guiding people toward helpful spiritual practices for a daily encounter with the living God. Our magazines and books are, for many people, a familiar and sacred place, a regular part of daily life.

For those of you who may not know this, we have an actual physical place you can visit, The Upper Room Chapel and Museum of Christian Art. http://upperroom.org/chapel/ Thousands of people visit us every year. Some come to view our annual display of nativity scenes at Advent or Ukrainian eggs during Lent or the magnificent wood carving of Leonardo daVinci’s The Last Supper. But I know that many visitors come with a hunger for something more than a tour; they yearn to meet God, to feel God’s presence in their lives. As we publish content in various forms through our various channels in the US and around the world, our heartfelt prayer is that you are finding your place to meet God on computer screens, magazines, books, cell phones, or whatever form of media you are most comfortable using.

And by all means, come see us in Nashville, Tennessee, when you are in the area!

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

Upper Room Books staff show issues from past years.

Beginning in 1961, Upper Room Ministries started publishing Upper Room Disciplines. Fifty-two writers a year are chosen to contribute seven meditations based on assigned yearly lectionary texts. Sounds simple enough, right? From the letters that we receive from readers and the feedback we receive from writers, we know that Upper Room Disciplines is so much more. Many of you have already embraced Disciplines as your daily devotional of choice. Perhaps you share your meditation time with a spouse, a family member, friends, or a reading group.

We at Upper Room Books want to hear from you! We’re starting a new segment here on the blog called “Show Us Your Disciplines.” We’re looking for pictures of you reading Disciplines in your home, at work, on the subway—wherever!

Show us a picture of where you read it each day; send a picture of your reading group. We want to see how you enjoy this daily practice. We will be posting these photos on our blog.

Disciplines editor Rita Collett surrounded by copies from her collection.

Email your photo to jbradley@gbod.org. With each photo submission, please include your full name and address (will not be published with photo) so that we can send you a copy of Upper Room Disciplines 2012 when it comes out in June 2011. We look forward to hearing from you!

Never miss a new post (or a new Disciplines picture!). Click the SUBSCRIBE button above.

Joanna Bradley, Assistant Editor & Administrative Coordinator

A map of the world was positioned at the front of the chapel. We opened with a hymn of intercession and petition, “Quaking Earth and Swirling Water,” penned in the early hours of this morning by staff member Safiyah Fosua. (I invite you to read those words, and sing them too. http://bit.ly/hEqD4y) Prayers, silence, the Taizé chorus “Hear Our Prayer,” more silence. Dean of the Chapel Tom Albin reminded us that when we feel powerless, we can pray. And we shall.

Share your prayer concerns for those affected by the tsunami here if you like.

Lord, hear our prayers.

Here I am (far right) ready to give personal meaning to the term “Fat Tuesday”! Also joining me are my colleagues (from left) Tom Albin, Rita Collett, Jeannie Crawford-Lee, and Sandy Miller.

I have not always known how to “do” Lent. No, fair reader, I grew up in a more evangelical Protestant church which rarely mentioned these practices, and if they did, it was usually accompanied with suspicion. Living in Michigan during my childhood, I had a number of Roman Catholic friends whom I observed with curiosity when their practices became more apparent in times like Lent.

Working with mainline-centered publishers for most of my career has enriched my sense of church seasons, and now my own Christian practice has broadened in such a way that I have begun to live in the rhythms of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time (to name the biggies). It really helps that I work in community that reminds me that it’s time “to observe a holy Lent.”

If you are like me and Lent does not come naturally to you, I can recommend a few books to help you get started.

A Clearing Season: Reflections for Lent by Sarah Parsons (http://bit.ly/fKoUoP) helped me to see Lent as a time to clear away obstacles in my life and to create a space for communion with God.

The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent by Pamela Hawkins  (http://bit.ly/fJ7KoL) explains from the get-go why Lent is kind of hard to understand and to keep up with. It has a user-friendly arrangement, especially for those not used to doing Lent.

Shadows, Darkness, and Dawn: A Lenten Journey with Jesus by Thomas Steagald (http://bit.ly/gu5v2a) helps you trace the journey of Jesus toward the cross, as well as explore the journeys of people he interacted with along the way. This one is great to read with a group, using the leader’s guide, which is included.

My prayer is that you and I and our communities will experience a meaningful and holy Lent and become closer to God on the journey.

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

Have you thought about letting go of something or taking on a spiritual practice for the season of Lent? Share your thoughts.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Developmental Editor

—Psalm 148:5 (JB)

I look out over Lake Tahoe. It is ringed by mountains, the water azure blue, framed by dignified pines and stolid boulders. The sky washes down to the rim of the mountains, the waves search out the shoreline rocks. Everything is just what it is, neither striving to conceal its flaws nor to inflate its beauty. All turn a face to the Creator, each finding its identity in the heart and mind of God.

Knowing that God is the source of our right and best self-understanding, is it not fitting that all should burst forth in God’s praise? Nothing is too mundane, too small, too insignificant to be overlooked or excluded from this uprush of joy. The wondrous release from the bondage of all that divides, diminishes, deceives is precisely for all. And this “all” is the gathering of brothers and sisters from every mineral, plant, and animal nation, with whom it is good and pleasant to dwell in unity. Precisely in the company of these exuberant companions, I can sing out my joy unmuffled, my single note made clearer and stronger by the notes of all.

There is a form of interwoven life that does not stifle and encumber but rather releases and strengthens. That is God’s design for created life. And that is why all are called upon to praise God and why all will do so, if not now, then later.

Perhaps spiritual writing is the effort to discern and make visible the deep, vital, nurturing patterns of interconnectedness that characterize God’s design. The spiritual traditions of Eastern Christianity carry the conviction that each created thing bears within it the imprint of its Maker. Prayerful attentiveness to the natural realm, therefore, can give insight into God’s presence and work in the world. The more deeply such in-sight penetrates to the heart of things, the more our ear becomes tuned to the various harmonies in which all that is sings the song of praise.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
The vault of heaven proclaims his handiwork;
Day discourses of it to day,
Night to night hands on the knowledge.

No utterance at all, no speech,
No sound that anyone can hear;
Yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their message to the ends of the world.

—Psalm 19:1-4 (JB)

Might it even be that spiritual writing, at its best, amplifies not only my single note but also these ancient hidden voices, allowing readers to hear the silent sound of all?

John Mogabgab, Special Projects Editor

One of the keynotes was given by Kevin Kelly, identified as “Senior Maverick” at Wired magazine. (http://www.kk.org/biography.php) I was intrigued by his statement that instead of being “People of the Book” we are becoming “People of the Screen.” Though the first phrase is actually an Islamic description of some religions that adhere to a prayer book other than the Qur’an (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book), Kelly used it more as a description of our society in general.

He pointed out the many screens that we look into each day: the TV, the computer monitor, cell phone, iPod, iPad,  the Kindle, the ATM machine, even the over-the-top screenage of Times Square, only a few blocks from the conference location. He emphasized, as did many speakers at the conference, that our “screening” of largely digital content will only be increasing with each passing day.

Our attraction to screens points to the visuality of our culture. As book publishers, we are realizing that our books don’t compete only with other books for attention in the busy marketplace and world of the web; they compete with screens of many kinds that daily capture our attention.

At The Upper Room, we have a core message: we publish and provide resources and programs that help people daily come closer to God. We are eager to put that message and compelling content onto as many kinds of screens as possible, in addition to print, so that our readers will encounter reminders of God’s presence wherever they go and on the many kinds of screens they may be viewing.

In the months ahead, I will talk more about the new and exciting digital products coming your way from The Upper Room.

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

Now I read the obituaries in my hometown of Nashville to see who among my mother’s generation or mine has slipped these earthly bonds. On Sundays The New York Times arrives in our driveway—fascinating obituaries await: actors, journalists, business tycoons, philanthropists, inventors, writers, and more. I know none of these people, and yet I’m riveted by descriptions of their lives deftly condensed to the limited space and small type of the obituary section. Take a peek; you might get hooked! http://nyti.ms/bKmQLb I read not just for information or entertainment, though. The obituaries do remind me of my mortality, which is a good thing. Monks used to greet one another with the words Memento mori. http://bit.ly/jd7DP

I’ve just had the pleasure of editing a book titled Don’t Write My Obituary Just Yet: Inspiring Faith Stories for Older Adults by Missy Buchanan http://amzn.to/foWXpA. Missy is refreshingly honest in addressing people who know they are living the final chapters—even pages—of their life story. It’s tough going most of the time. Body parts are faltering or failing. Comfort—physical and emotional—can be fleeting.

It can be tempting to mentally check out early on life, yet faithful older adults are still writing their life stories. It is not time for the final summation. Insights, new discoveries, and God-moments can appear around the next corner of the day, out of the afternoon’s reverie, in a chat with a visitor or a new neighbor, even in a nursing home. Engaging life through activities, conversation, and study fulfills the promise of later years.

Missy reminds all of us that our story—lived in relationship with our Creator—is not over until it’s over. We are never too old to be part of God’s work on this earth.

Hey, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. Be part of the story we’re writing!

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Developmental Editor

Last week I was searching for a prayer practice to open a meeting with, and I turned to one of our newest books, Praying in the Messiness of Life: 7 Ways to Renew Your Relationship with God by Linda Douty. http://amzn.to/fgUAGi Linda brings some prayer-freshening ideas to those of us who sometimes have trouble sustaining a regular, disciplined approach to prayer.

In the section called “Praying with the Circumstances,” I was drawn to the “It Is As It Is” prayer (page 84). These days, I often hear people use the expression “It is what it is.” Often the speaker can’t figure out how to solve some difficulty or problem, so the expression becomes a sort of grudging surrender to the circumstances of life.

Douty notes that “one of the more difficult aspects of the spiritual life is balancing honesty and hope.” One the one hand, we acknowledge our pain and suffering; on the other hand, “we must shift the energy from what happened to us to what we can do now.” She invites us, when we notice ourselves in a downward spiral of victim talk, to insert the phrase “it is as it is” into our thoughts. “Whether we landed in the challenging circumstances through accident or ignorance, through another’s folly or our own, we can rest on the bedrock truth of Romans 8:28: All things work together for good. God can use anything and everything to shape us into the image of Christ.”

So “it is as it is” can be a word of hope instead of defeated acceptance. To help you incorporate this prayer into your life, I leave you with one of Linda Douty’s reflection questions: What is the most challenging circumstance in your life right now? Can you see God’s grace accompanying you, breaking through in the midst of difficulty? In spite of it?

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

My gym instructor, viewing me reading a Kindle on the elliptical trainer, says, “I like real books. I like to hold a book in my hands and turn the pages.” And generally speaking, I would agree. However, I first and foremost like to read—therefore I am open to whatever presents itself for a particular setting. Consider the Kindle or another ebook reader while exercising: no trying to hold the book open, no fumbling with page turns, no falling off the treadmill. And for air travel the e-readers are a great way to pack without bulk! And have fifty books at one’s fingertips. I am finding it easy to tuck my Kindle into a backpack and take it along with me anywhere.

I still like the feel of paper and the weight of a book in my hand, but the Kindle provides convenience for my passion of reading. And it doesn’t require dusting!

Rita Collett
Editor, Disciplines 2011
Managing Editor, Upper Room Books

I turned the manuscript page carefully, my eyes scanning the next meditation. All at once I realized that I had been present when Henri delivered it. He was speaking at the Yale University chapel during Holy Week. His text was Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Every pew was full. The congregation stirred expectantly as he entered the pulpit. He was silent for what seemed a very long time, and when he spoke his words caused a flush of anxious concern for him to wash through me. Henri described all that he had hoped to do in this sermon and then confessed that after reading the text many times, and especially after repeatedly seeing Jesus stretched out on the ground crying out to have the cup taken from him (Mark 14:36), he had no words, could make no comments on the agony of God.

What struck me so forcefully as I sat in the Archives was how Henri’s handwritten manuscript reflected the very struggle he had announced to the congregation. Whole paragraphs were marked through and lines with arrows connected a sentence near the top of the page with another at the bottom. Phrases were scratched out and substitutes inserted above them. Here before my eyes was a graphic depiction of the fact that writing is often a real struggle, and perhaps at its deepest, even a spiritual struggle. I recall how Martin Luther observed that though the craft of writing required only the lightest of tools, one’s whole mind and body must be engaged to meet the challenge presented by a blank page. True meaning and enduring truth are untamed things, and writers must be persistent in searching them out. To discern shadows of meaning and hints of truth in the highlands and lowlands of experience, and then to find words that will coax them out of hiding for public display in a manuscript, is labor indeed.

In the L’Arche Daybreak community near Toronto where Henri Nouwen spent the last ten years of his life (www.larchedaybreak.com), people use a wonderful word to describe relationships among members of the community. That’s word is “accompaniment.” Every person in the community is there to accompany others on their path to wholeness. I think “accompaniment” is also a good word for the relationship between editors and writers. Editors accompany writers as they struggle to name what is intrinsically elusive. In this process, writers, editors, and readers may find themselves a few steps closer to fullness of life.

John S. Mogabgab

Special Projects Editor, Upper Room Books

Recently as I was reading a manuscript, a sentence from the introduction practically leapt off the page at me. In Praying in the Messiness of Life, Linda Douty writes, “We’ll explore ways to become more aware of God’s presence in life as it is rather than that mythical day when things settle down.”

That’s what I’ve been doing, I thought—waiting for things to settle down. Maybe there’s a spiritual lesson here somewhere?

It seems I’ve been waiting a lot over the past several months. In March I was asked to consider moving from Upper Room Books, where I’d been an associate editor for nine years, to The Upper Room’s marketing department. After winding up a couple of projects, I made the move to marketing near the end of May.

Since then I’ve been living into my new job responsibilities. I’ve realized how much I have yet to learn about marketing and various kinds of writing—catalog copy, ads, press releases. And though I embrace the opportunity to learn new skills, I feel like someone who’s taken up residence in a foreign country—I’m learning a new language, and it’s taking a while to catch on to the different rhythm of my life.

At the same time, I’ve had to learn about waiting in my personal life. First there’s the long-term experience of waiting for my young adult children to mature (and watching them reject some of the values my husband and I have tried to instill in them) and make decisions about life directions.

A more daily experience of waiting resulted from our three-car family (with four members who needed to get to work) having to share cars for several months. At one point this summer, we were down to one car and had to rent two cars for a month.

Before this summer, I’d never thought about how much of my independence depends on being able to get in the car and GO. Some days as I was ferried to work, I didn’t know exactly how I would get home. (I can’t begin to describe how much not knowing the plan for the day rattles me.) Everything eventually worked out, but sometimes I had to ask people outside my family for rides, and this wasn’t easy for me, since I am, as my husband likes to say, “as independent as a hog on ice.”

So what lessons (spiritual and otherwise) have I learned over these months?

1. Change is constant; you can fight it, or you can accept it. As Linda Douty said, God is present in life as it is. Sometimes you have to look deeper to find God’s presence in certain circumstances, but often you will discover surprising evidence that God has been there all along.

2. It’s okay to ask people for help. Someday I hope to be able to help those kind souls who gave me rides, but if I can’t repay them, I can always help someone else.

3. Waiting gives you pockets of time for reflection. It can even be a spiritual experience. Some of my best prayer time this summer happened while I was waiting to be picked up from work. Perhaps my little exercises of waiting developed some patience in me, but that remains to be seen.

_____________________________________________________

Praying in the Messiness of Life: Seven Ways to Renew Your Relationship with God by Linda Douty will be published by Upper Room Books in March 2011.  This honest, gentle book about how to weave prayer throughout your day is well worth the wait.

Anne Trudel is associate marketing editor for The Upper Room. She has worked in publishing since 1999, having served as managing editor for two years at Thomas Nelson Publishers and as associate editor in Upper Room Books for nine years. Anne and her husband, John, are members of Belmont United Methodist Church.

Gifts, decorations, lights, carols—what’s not to like about Christmas? John’s words of indictment, preparation, and promise create a strong sense of dis-ease—both in his hearers then and those of us now. His words may even foster some resentment: I personally don’t feel particularly viperish. And yet John comes with a message of God’s imminent judgment. By golly, the ax is going to be laid to the root of the trees. Read more here…

Week One: The Holy Spirit
Day Four: God’s Shining Face
Read Psalm 80:1-19

Today’s journaling exercise seemed a little problematic for me at first. The quote from Julian of Norwich resonated with me: “So Jesus is our true Mother . . . by grace. . . . He wants us to know it, for he wants to have all our love fastened on him.” Somehow my imagination can translate motherliness to Jesus, but I can’t imagine “God’s face,” as suggested. Read more here.

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√ Be a part of the Meeting the Messiah conversation. Visit this site (“Meeting the Messiah: Scriptures for the Advent Season”) every day during Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (November 28, 2010, through January 3, 2011) to read and reflect on posts based on the book’s entry points.

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That statement from today’s scripture leaps out at me. When I consider “meeting the Messiah” this Advent and Christmas, I realize that we are talking about an encounter with the Son of God who brings us timeless truth. Read more here…

√ Be a part of the Meeting the Messiah conversation. Visit this site (“Meeting the Messiah: Scriptures for the Advent Season”) every day during Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (November 28, 2010, through January 3, 2011) to read and reflect on posts based on the book’s entry points.

John Mogabgab, Special Projects Editor, Upper Room Books

John Mogabgab, Special Projects Editor: I was the founding editor of Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, published by Upper Room. From 1975 to 1980 I served as theologian Henri Nouwen’s teaching, research, and editorial assistant at Yale Divinity School.

I’m a contributor to Spirituality in Ecumenical Perspective (1993), Nouwen Then: Personal Reflections on Henri (1999), and Turning the Wheel: Henri Nouwen and Our Search for God (2007). I’m the editor of The Weavings Reader: Living With God in the World (1993), and Communion, Community, Commonweal: Readings For Spiritual Leadership (1995).

Recent reading I’ve enjoyed includes Ted Leeson’s Inventing Montana, an extended meditation on the relation between place and experience.

When not at my desk, I enjoy hiking, canoeing, and wading rivers with fly rod in hand.

John Mogabgab

Special Projects Editor, Upper Room Books

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Developmental Editor, Upper Room Books

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Developmental Editor: When I walked into my office, a lush bouquet of flowers graced my office windowsill. It was a gift to celebrate my tenth anniversary at Upper Room Books. That gives you a hint about the people around here. It’s been a good ten years!

I started as a project editor at Upper Room Books after several years of freelance editing and part-time jobs while my two sons were young. Getting back to the routine of regular work presented a bit of a challenge, but the Upper Room authors and what they have to say pulled me right in. For instance, my first assignment was Jan Johnson’s Growing Compassionate Kids. Passionate, compassionate, insightful, funny. Jan was a dynamic “first.”

The annual dated journal Journeying Through the Days became my “baby” for several years. I treasured the task of pairing photographs and quotations. In solemn ritual I’d spread index cards with quotes collected by folks around here and 35-mm slides from the chosen photographer all over a big conference table. Those who trained me taught me to pray at that juncture, and it seemed fitting. I was about to compose a year’s worth of inspiration for journalers. We’ve gone digital since then! No more cards and slides.

“Developmental editor” became my job title a couple of years ago, which means on certain projects I spend more time with the author early in the process of creating a book. It’s a gratifying role because I get to see a book taking shape and then shepherd it through the design and production process, too.

One of the perks of working at Upper Room Books for me has been the chance to explore my own spiritual life in greater depth. I took part in the two-year Academy for Spiritual Formation, sponsored by Upper Room Ministries, in 2004–2006; that was an amazing introduction to Christian tradition and spiritual writers across the centuries.

It’s exciting to have this new opportunity to connect with you, our readers, now with an online presence and the potential for conversation. I hope you’ll take a look around and share your thoughts.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee

Developmental Editor, Upper Room Books

All righty then. I’ve tried using a devotional guide and taking a phrase or word with me through the day. Seems a bit lame. I’ve got a designated prayer chair to which I give a convenient nod ever so often. I have candles and prayer beads and prayer stools. Perhaps I have gotten hung up on methodology.

So I shall consider praying while on the elliptical trainer, but it scarcely seems contemplative. I keep thinking that while Jesus took  time apart for prayer, the exercise came naturally in his day-to-day life. Now exercise is one more thing to try to work in that’s good for a body.

It would appear that I am excellent at rationalizations. The time I can control (sort of) are the morning hours. So, do I get up at 5:00 to pray, then head to the job, go work out, stop off for groceries, cook dinner, go to bed, and get up and do it all over again. Is this the abundant life Jesus promised?

A friend of mine once wrote: “There must be more to faith than sleeping children and tidy houses.” However, messy houses and wide-awake children don’t guarantee faith either.

So I muse and muddle, glancing at my  prayer chair more fervently.  Am I too busy to pray or too busy not to pray?

Rita Collett

Managing Editor, Upper Room Books

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director, Upper Room Books

At its 2010 retreat and meeting, the Academy of Christian Editors (ACE)  voted member Robin Pippin, Editorial Director of Upper Room Books, as a new board member for a three-year term. Robin has been a member of ACE since 2005 and served as retreat leader for the 2009 event held in Nashville.

The organization is by-invitation-only for editors in the Christian book publishing industry.

The purpose of the Academy of Christian Editors is to enhance the professional competence of Christian editors and promote a collegial forum for the study and discussion of issues of mutual interest and concern.

Congratulations, Robin!

“I am being followed. It started a month ago when I began doing public readings of my new memoir, Reluctant Pilgrim: A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert’s Search for Spiritual Community. Everywhere I go I look into the crowd to find my stalker — a question masked behind different faces but always shyly and defiantly rising to meet me again. ‘What is grace?’”

Read more here.

Rita Collett, Managing Editor at Upper Room Books

Rita Collett, Managing Editor: I began at Upper Room Books part time in March 1992 as a stop-gap measure. After two and one-half years of stop-gap measure, I was hired full time. Yay for benefits!! I enjoy tidying up, so this work is a good fit for my desires and skill set. I have been totally amazed by how this 17.5-year sojourn has shaped me spiritually: a real testimony to the work we do day by day. Being shaped in the image of Christ can be a sneaky business.

My spouse, a United Methodist minister and husband of more than38 years, has been my most formative agent (well, Jesus may run a close second). His preaching of the word with integrity and critical thought has moved me from spiritual infancy (we did marry when I was 19) to a more solid and mature Christian faith. Our three kiddos are well above average (Garrison Keillor has nothing on us) and contributing to the world’s well-being. I find myself, at this point in life, deeply satisfied. May you find yourself so.

I thoroughly enjoyed attending the Durham launch party for the release of

In my opening remarks to the crowd of about 70 people, I explained a little bit about our Fresh Air Books imprint. Fresh Air Books are tagged as “Christian Books for Non-Churchy People.” We are looking for fresh voices, like Enuma’s, to speak to a world searching for authenticity and meaning.

Recently I was asked by an editor from another Christian publisher, “What book are you an evangelist for?”

I didn’t have to think long about it; I knew right away that I would name this book, Reluctant Pilgrim. It is a book for our times.

When I recite that long and winding subtitle, “A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert’s Search for Spiritual Community,” to someone I’m talking to about the book, without fail there is a glint of recognition in their eyes, a knowing smile, a pique of interest. Why?

Because Enuma’s story is our story, told in her eloquent, humorous, Enuma-like way. We are all on a search for spiritual community. Our different pilgrimages take different forms, for sure. But our hearts get it when we hear the tale of a sister, another weary wanderer.

(A special bonus at the Durham event was getting to hear fabulous singer and musician Shana Tucker! Listen to her music at www.ShanaTucker.com.)

If you are in the Nashville area, please join us for the Nashville launch of the book on Thursday, October 21, at 6:00 p.m. at The Upper Room Chapel and Center for Christian Arts.

RSVP to receive a free copy of Enuma’s book at the event. To RSVP call 615.340.7243 or email customerassistance@upperroom.org.

Robin Pippin

Editorial Director, Upper Room Books

Welcome to the first of our posts introducing our editorial team. We’ll highlight one member each week so you can get to know us a bit.

Joanna Bradley, Editorial Assistant: I began working with Upper Room Books in January 2009. As a college graduate with a degree in English, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in publishing, with the hopes of becoming an editor some day. I couldn’t have asked to work with better people; they are sincerely devoted to bringing encouraging content to the world. I’ve had the recent pleasure of getting our team started on Twitter. Come find us at @URBooks. We would love to hear from you!

Many authors resonate with the vision of Henry David Thoreau writing at Walden Pond. Quiet, solitude, and the opportunity to be totally creative beckon those who write. What authors often forget is that Walden Pond was less than two miles from the village of Concord, which Thoreau visited several times a week. He met with his contemporaries Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne to share thoughts on their writing and the world.

Today, it is just as important for you, as an author, to connect with colleagues who share your love for writing. This type of support can offer opportunities to share constructive criticism, discuss the publishing industry, offer marketing support to one another, and build friendships.

We suggest that you take part in one or more of the connectional opportunities below.

Ways to Connect:

• Invite others in your church to write with you at least once a month— a meditation, a story, or a chapter.
• Find a writing partner and support each other’s work.
• Join an online writing community, such as Writers Cafe, Red Room, or Writing.Com.

From the Marketing Department of Upper Room Books

Not long ago I sat in a group of older adults. They were residents of an assisted living center where I visit each week. I had to smile when their conversation shifted from the french toast they’d had for breakfast to plans for their funeral services. Read more here…

By Missy Buchanan, from the ABC News website, Oct. 1, 2010

Missy is the author of Talking With God in Old Age and Living with Purpose in a Worn-Out Body, both from Upper Room Books and available through our bookstore. You can learn more about Missy at her website: http://www.missybuchanan.com.

Fresh Air Books, an imprint of Upper Room Books, is delighted to share with you a review from Publishers Weekly about one of our newest titles, Mud & Poetry: Love, Sex, and the Sacred, by Tyler Blanski.

Mud & Poetry: Love, Sex, and the Sacred
Tyler Blanski, Upper Room, $16.95 paper (208p) ISBN 9781935205098
Musician and new author Blanski is on a mission to shake up Christianity. The themes he addresses are not new, but his edgy and hip prose breathe new life into them. Being a Christian, Blanski contends, is not about pursuing angelic purity and removing soul stains–it is a messy endeavor. Within the mess, however, God is present, laboring in human lives, and nothing in life is off limits. He draws from a wide variety of sources from within, and outside, the Christian tradition. Most impressive is the author’s articulation of his own ongoing journey toward a good life. He doesn’t subscribe to the popular notion of conversion as immediate and final; rather, his sense of it is much more gradual, lasting throughout life. Some may find a touch of naïveté in this work, especially the passages regarding marriage. But young adults could benefit greatly, especially those with a sense that they should not have to completely change who they are in order to pursue religious faith. (Sept.)

It came to mind along with a flood of personal memories on reading a post by Loretta Ross on The Praying Life. I definitely was a barefoot kid too—though maybe not to the extent Loretta describes. But I knew every tickly blade of grass, hot brick walkway, and thorny patch in my backyard. Getting my feet clean in the summertime required serious scrubbing. That connectedness to the earth delighted me.

But by the time I had young sons, I was marinated in parental angst and rarely let them roam around unshod. It was a little shocking to me when my younger son went off to rustic Camp Country Lad where the boys were allowed to go barefoot all the time if they so chose. And Will so chose—for which I’m grateful!

Some folks remove their shoes to receive the Lord’s Supper if they possibly can—it’s holy ground. And Loretta Ross made me think about that practice a little more deeply. We interpose so much stuff between us and God. Maybe there are times when literally taking off our shoes can help us shed some of what separates us from the love of our Creator.

Jeannie Crawford-Lee, Associate Editor for Upper Room Books

But I have made a shift in my thinking: I can read books in just about any form and be okay with it. I made this decision almost two years ago when I realized the inevitability of the digital revolution in book publishing.

I have the second-generation Kindle, and I use it a lot. I love the convenience of being able to order just about any book I want to read–all in about 60 seconds! (Granted, this kind of impulsive buying ability can be tough on the Amazon credit account.)

When I upgraded to a smart phone a few months ago, I quickly realized that I held in my hand not only a phone with a web browser, but an eReader as well. Amazon provides a Kindle app, which allows me to read any book that I have previously purchased on my Kindle. I have downloaded other free eReader apps as well.

I’ve also downloaded the free Stanza app on my iPod Touch, allowing me to read thousands of free books made available by The Gutenberg Project, as well as easily purchased eBooks.

As editorial director of Upper Room Books, I consider it one of my top responsibilities to work with our good marketing folks to make sure that our excellent content makes its way onto these eReading devices, as well as into traditional book form.

We have a number of Kindle editions of our titles available now, such as The Unmaking of a Part-Time Christian. We are adding more titles each month.

I encourage you to start making the transition to being a reader of all formats of content. I think you will be pleased with the portability and convenience of many of the new devices.

Dive in . . . the water’s fine!

Robin Pippin

Editorial Director, Upper Room Books

Links updated on Sept. 9, 2010

KEYS TO SUCCESS

Imagine that you are in the restaurant business, and you know that people search for eating establishments in the local telephone book. Moreover, you are sure it is unlikely that a potential customer will come across your business’s name among the thousands of names in the White Pages. Realizing this, you choose to buy ad space in the restaurant section of the Yellow Pages, because the word restaurant will be an excellent “keyword” for searching. To further increase the probability of potential customers locating your business, you place your ad under “Italian Restaurants” in the north side of town. Italian Restaurant and Italian Restaurant North are your “key phrases.” Surely your sales will increase because you have made it easy for potential customers to find you.

So, how is it with your website? How will readers find your content if your keywords and phrases are random and inconsistent?

This month we want to direct you to two simple tools that will help you evaluate your website’s keywords and phrases. Use these and you will assuredly enjoy increased interest as you blog, write articles, and update your homepage.

Rule of Thumb

Your keyword density should be approximately 3% of your content. While it is important to use keywords to help readers find you, the overall content of the site will bring readers back.

Two Simple Tools:

KEYWORD DENSITY

Use this tool to discover the top keywords/phrases in your Web site. Are your keywords/phrases words that Internet surfers might key in during a search?

GOOGLE ADWORDS KEYWORDS

Use this site to key in words that you want to use in your own website and find the probability of someone searching for those words.

Review of Woman Overboard: How Passion Saved My Life from Heather Hunt

SOULfeast 2010 – Loving God Well

July 18-22, 2010
Lake Junaluska, NC

Are you in search of experiences and relationships that will nourish your soul? If so, SOULfeast has something for you! SOULfeast is truly a spiritual feast for all God’s people. By mixing ingredients from the great traditions of the Church as well as fresh new Christian expressions, SOULfeast creates a savory experience that church leaders, families, and people young and old can enjoy. Come to enjoy great preaching and teaching, daily Sabbath rest; come to gather fresh ideas for your spiritual life and ministry; come to connect with like-minded friends. Come and feast with us!

Feasting with us in 2010 are Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, Juanita and Rudy Rasmus, Phyllis Tickle, Wil Hernandez,Patricia Wilson, and many others!

For more information…

We hope that this new site will inspire devotion and create community, two goals that we have for our Upper Room Books publishing program.

Since 1935, The Upper Room has been known as a place “where the world meets to pray.” Our daily devotional guide provides a daily way to pray for millions of people. Our books extend the options for daily prayer—from our bestselling lectionary-based annual book, Upper RoomDisciplines to our classic Guides to Prayer.

Small-group formational resources such as the Companions in Christ series and The Workbook of Living Prayer have brought millions of people together in community with each other and with the living Christ. We believe that God uses our relationships with one another to spur our spiritual growth.

You’ll find on this site information about writing proposals for Upper Room Books, news about our books, links to author blogs, and a way to get to know our editorial staff better.

So, I’ll start by introducing myself. I’ve been an editor at The Upper Room since 1990. I started out in Upper Room Books as an assistant editor; in 1995 I became editor of our new teen devotional magazine, Devo’Zine; in 2006 I came full circle back to Upper Room Books as editorial director. My job includes acquiring new books for our publishing program in addition to leading a team of five editorial staff.

I am married to Tim Pippin, an IT specialist, and we have three children: Rachel, 21; Becca, 18; and Paul, 15. We attend Crosspoint Community Church in Nashville.

So, that’s a little bit about me. What else would you like to know about Upper Room Books?

With God’s peace,

Robin Pippin, Editorial Director

Upper Room Books